Building Jerusalem? Christianity and the Labour Party

Paul Bickley About the author Copyright © 2010 by The British and Foreign Paul Bickley is a Researcher at Theos – Bible Society and Paul Bickley the public theology think-tank. With a The moral rights of the author have been background working in Parliament and asserted. public affairs, he holds an M.Litt. from the All rights reserved. No part of this publication School of Divinity at the University of may be reproduced, stored or transmitted St Andrews. Paul is married to Rebecca, and in any form or by any means, electronic or has two sons, Ernest and Arthur. mechanical, including photocopying, recording, Acknowledgements or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright The author is grateful to MP, owner. This book is sold subject to the condition Jim Dobbin MP, Andy Flannagan, that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, Nick Spencer, Ian Geary, Daniel Gover and be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated Matt Rhodes for their helpful comments on without the copyright holder’s prior consent in the text, and to Jack Reid for his assistance any form of binding or cover other than that in with the bibliography. Any deficiencies which this is published and without a similar remain the author’s own. condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

Unless otherwise indicated Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-0-564-04746-8

This edition published in 2010 by The British and Foreign Bible Society Typeset by Bible Society Resources Ltd Design by CatchyMonkey Design Printed in the UK

Bible Society Stonehill Green, Westlea, Swindon SN5 7DG Charity Registration No. 232759 Visit biblesociety.org.uk Contents

Series foreword 1 Introduction 4 The ideological context 5 What are we looking for? 7 Notes 12 Nineteenth century engagements 14 Age of Atonement 14 Victorian Christian 16 Founding fathers and Nonconformity 22 The theology of early Labour leaders 28 The Labour Church Movement 32 Notes 36 Twentieth century engagements 39 Themes in the work of R.H. Tawney 39 The Roman Catholic tadition 46 Notes 53 Twenty-first century engagements 56 Contemporary Christian Socialism 56 Revisionism and the turn to a liberal Labour tradition 63 Notes 71 Bibliography 73

Series foreword

The Bible speaks to politics because God is Presently, the public role of religion in the interested in government – the right public UK is both expanding and deepening. At ordering of our relational priorities. But the same time, it is attracting fierce criticism what about party politics? Political parties from increasingly assertive secularists. This are often tribal. Commanding our loyalty, makes the need for fresh insight on how they can often be places that both express Christianity relates to British parties an and suppress religious identity. Whether urgent priority. we like it or not, political parties dominate politics in the UK and are set to do so The first phase of the project concentrates for the foreseeable future. As collegiate on the three largest parties – Conservative, enterprises, they have traditionally provided Labour, and Liberal Democrat – but our a political focus for joining broad sets of hope is that a later phase will engage other ideas around a unifying theme or common parties as well, and from all four nations vision for society. In recent years, as the of the UK. This phase has developed with inspiration of great political ideals has the invaluable help of the three Christian waned, they have become more complex party political groups within the parties and even contradictory vehicles for concerned – the Conservative Christian representation. This offers new challenges Fellowship (CCF), the Christian Socialist and opportunities for Christian engagement Movement (CSM) and the Liberal Democrat in politics. Christian Forum (LDCF). Special thanks are due to Elizabeth Berridge (CCF), Andy This is one of three publications – extended Flannagan (CSM), and Zoe Dixon (LCDF). essays – representing the first phase of the We are immensely grateful for their Partisan project – a developing resource enthusiasm for the project, for their advice on Christianity and British political parties as it took shape, and for their assistance in initiated and funded by the Bible Society, disseminating these first fruits. We should and produced and delivered in partnership make it clear, however, that while these with the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian three organisations generously offered Ethics (KLICE). The aim of the project is to their moral and practical support for the stimulate new and robust Christian political preparation of these essays, the opinions reflection within British political parties. It expressed in them are the authors’ alone has been launched at a paradoxical time. and do not represent the official stances 1 Building Jerusalem? Series foreword

of the organisations concerned nor of the Our hope is that the Partisan project parties to which they are affiliated (nor of will bring fresh theological depth, self- the project’s two institutional sponsors). awareness, and critical potential to conversations already under way about the These essays are offered as a part of a contribution of Christian faith to British conversation that has been going on party politics. The essays leave no doubt for many years among party political that Christianity has made notable – at Christians. As ‘critical friends’ of perhaps even decisive – contributions parties, the authors were each asked to to the thinking and practice of the parties. address the role of Christianity within At the same time, they proceed from the them. We commissioned Joshua Hordern, recognition that these contributions Paul Bickley and Stephen Backhouse to are not only ignored by many, but also often engage – appreciatively but frankly – with resisted or derided by some voices within the history, theology and broad policy the parties. Among the latter are those orientations of the party traditions to which who still subscribe to the discredited – yet they were assigned. We invited them to surprisingly tenacious – social-scientific identify the characteristic historical and myth that modernisation necessarily (and contemporary ‘gifts’ given by the Christian rightly) brings with it the privatisation of faith to the party tradition in question, religion and the secularisation of the public but also to employ insights from Christian square. The Partisan project sets itself political theology to confront the party’s squarely against that myth and seeks to vulnerabilities or Achilles’ heels where they underline the legitimacy of a wide variety found them. Within those broad parameters of faith-based contributions to political the authors were given freedom to develop debate, within an open democratic forum in their arguments as they saw fit, with their which robust political parties will continue own preferred emphases, and in their own to play an indispensable role. distinctive idioms. Importantly, the books seek to be discursive, not definitive. Each No one involved in the project – least of offers a particular (theological) reading of all the authors themselves – pretends that the history and contemporary condition of these essays are anything more than one the concerned, in recognition modest contribution to a debate that needs that there are, of course, other equally to take place at many levels and to involve legitimate and necessary readings. We a wide range of participants – and not are very grateful to the authors for the only Christians. Yet, given the widespread intelligence and dedication with which they popular disillusionment with and rose to the demanding challenges of our disengagement from party politics – indeed commission. from the whole political process – in recent 2 Building Jerusalem? Series foreword

years, the ‘convictional health’ of parties is of vital concern for our entire parliamentary democracy.

Everyone involved in this project would share the conviction that, as an ancient prophet warned another nation in crisis, ‘where there is no vision, the people perish’ ccfwebsite.com (Proverbs 29.18, AV). We hope that these essays stimulate new thinking about the urgent need for, and the desirable contents of, new political visions shaped by a primary Christian identity and biblical worldview. thecsm.org.uk We hope too that they will offer food for the journey for those already working within British political parties, and inspire others to consider entering the party political fray themselves as a constructive, honourable and missional arena of authentic Christian citizenship – for the common good of the ldcf.net whole nation.

David Landrum (Senior Parliamentary Officer, Bible Society) biblesociety.org.uk

Jonathan Chaplin (Director, KLICE) klice.co.uk

3 Introduction

Introduction

In the 1906 General Election, the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) fielded over fifty candidates for election. Owing to a pact with the powerful Liberal Party of the day, around thirty of these had a straight run at their seats. Twenty-nine were elected, with a further Liberal member joining the group early in the Parliament. As a result of the Lib/Lab pact and – in the light of the Taff Vale judgement – the slow awakening of the trade unions’ political consciousness, the now had independent political representation.1 They sat on the opposition benches, elected their own whips and officers, and gave themselves a new name: the Labour Party.

This looks like a moment when British gentleman?’ asked John Ball, Lollard priest politics changed irrevocably. In spite of a and ringleader of the Peasants’ Revolt.3 Liberal landslide in 1906, that party would The Christian tradition and the witness of suffer a ‘strange death’ within a generation its Scriptures are shot through with the and for the rest of the twentieth century demand for justice and righteousness. political life would be dominated by two The New Testament announcement of the parties and two . In reality, it Kingdom of God looks like a profound was just one of a series of small steps that reversal of the social order, where the first saw the development of a coherent social shall be last and the last shall be first, movement to secure a national public life where those who care for the ‘least of reordered and rebalanced in the economic these brothers of mine’ will be recognised and political interests of the urban working by God. This is not an idle eschatological class. vision – pie in the sky when we die – but one which its proponents have often sought Many – and not simply the religious to realise within the present political order. – have observed that Christianity has Gerard Winstanley, sixteenth century radical had a profound influence on this labour and founder of the egalitarian Digger tradition.2 In British political history ‘radical’ communities, spoke of the imperative for positions have frequently been nourished action: ‘my mind was not at rest, because by Christian thought, their imagination nothing was acted, and thoughts ran in me, shaped by a biblical imagination. ‘When that words and writings were all nothing, Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a and must die, for action is the life of all, and 4 Introduction

if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing’. In sufficiently agreeable). The Jubilee Debt the honourable tradition of Christian social Campaign is just one example of where reflection, it has long been understood that religiously inspired social movements without corresponding action theology is and the Labour Party have continued, disempowered.4 enthusiastically, to find common cause. There is some evidence to suggest that Whatever the chequered history of the Labour Party continues to enjoy higher Christianity, it would be hard to deny levels of support amongst some elements of that the Christian gospel is the primary the Christian community (and significantly intellectual progenitor of the higher Muslim support), though less so than commitment to human dignity and in the past.5 Yet there clearly is something equality that undergirds all democratic in the culture of the Party that now tends to political projects. In one sense, then, it alienate Christians: Labour may or may not was eminently predictable that from its ‘owe more to Methodism than Marx’, but it birth to the present day, many of Labour’s has nevertheless become the very party that leaders would have espoused some form doesn’t ‘do God’.6 of Christian faith – Hardie and Henderson, Brown and Blair. It is not surprising that mid- The ideological context Victorian Christian Socialism flourished into The Labour Party, unlike its European life as a response to the legitimate claims counterparts, has never called itself of Chartism, nor that elements of Chartism socialist. At the founding of the itself were, in aspects, strongly religious. We in 1893 should not be shocked that a straight line in , this was a conscious and is often drawn between Nonconformity and deliberate choice. Hardie and others Labour politics, or that R.H. Tawney looms recognised the wisdom in incorporating large in the mythology, if not the thinking, a broad coalition of individuals and ideas of the modern Labour Party. into a movement defending the interests of the working man and woman. It needed, What is more surprising is the comparative above all, to be capable of attracting the level of hostility that now exists between unionised , which Ben Tillet churches, Christians and the Labour Party described as ‘a body of men well organised, and its broader movement. Rhetorically who paid their money, and were Socialists at – and in some cases in actuality – the their work every day and not merely on the relationship has remained warm (though platform, who did not shout for blood-red that warmth is now more often directed revolution, and when it came to revolution, towards a homogenised category of ‘faith sneaked [sic] under the nearest bed’.7 groups’, and only when their behaviour is 5 Building Jerusalem? Introduction

Nevertheless, to the extent that the Party we survey the ideological landscape, we locates itself within that ideological see that there are a variety of socialisms, tradition, it is tempting to launch headlong and some doctrines prevail at some times. into a theological critique of socialism in But in a further complication, it is not its various guises.8 If we were to do so, we simply that there are different emphases would have to recognize that ‘socialism’ is or priorities. Some of these doctrines not a unitary or coherent body of thought, might be simultaneously held yet mutually easily described. In fact, socialism assumes contradictory. In other words, the problem is such a variety of shapes and emphases not simply the plurality of positions, but also that R.H. Tawney was led to speak of ‘the their inconsistency.10 radiant ambiguity of the word’ and suggest that its meaning varies substantially with ‘How then to decide which is the correct the political realities and the specific scripture?’ asks Crosland, in an interesting environment in which it develops. It is turn of phrase. Concluding that it is always ‘unprofitable to discuss the doctrine impossible, he suggests a selection of in general terms without defining the broader themes coalescing around a welfare particular type of it under consideration’.9 objective associated with the eradication of primary poverty and the guarantee of Which socialism does the Labour party universal material subsistence. For him, express? Perhaps the most influential this was a primary motivating force for the post-war Labour thinker, , majority of socialists who never subscribed identified no less than twelve separate to a particular theoretic creed.11 and distinct intellectual traditions which shaped the Party, leading to the awkwardly Crosland suggests that these themes had complicated conclusion that historically become disjointed from economic and it has drawn from them all. These include political reality by the 1950s. As both John Locke’s philosophy of natural law, the a thinker and an elected politician he experimental socialism of Robert Owen, the represented a final and crucial element Ricardian labour theory of value, William of the Labour tradition: revisionism. This Morris’ anti-commercialism, Fabianism, the describes the capacity of the Labour paternalist welfare state tradition, along Party to reframe its aims, objectives and with and Christian Socialism. For methods according to foundational values. Crosland, Christian Socialism is aligned Characteristically, the revisionist tendency most closely with Owenite perspectives on has followed Tawney and Crosland in the cooperative organisation of industry, distinguishing between means and ends. since for both ‘the essential evil was the The ‘end’ – the kind of society we want competitive pursuit of private gain …’. As 6 Building Jerusalem? Introduction

to see – is non-negotiable; the means can What are we looking for? change according to time and circumstance. Unfortunately for our project, the Labour tradition is therefore in all sorts of ways The worst source of confusion is the a moving target – we must speak not of tendency to use the word [socialism] to socialism, but of socialisms, and perhaps describe not a certain kind of society, or not of the Labour Party, but of Labour certain values which might be attributes Parties.14 As Robert Leach has pointed of a society, but particular policies which out, it is equally difficult to see with what are, or are thought to be, means of principle the precise and authentic Christian attaining this kind of society or realising socialist tradition, within the Party, might these attributes.12 be identified.15 The different flowerings of Christian engagement with the Party seem, Although Crosland and others were prima facie, to have no strong relationship championing this position in the early with each other. F.D. Maurice’s nuanced 1950s, and R.H. Tawney and Hugh Dalton theological critique of the operation of the even earlier, it was not until the last decade competitive free market and Kier Hardie’s of the twentieth century that revisionism uncompromising Christian polemics achieved its full potency in the Party. The against inequality seem separated not just symbolic removal of Clause IV – which in time, but also by tone and content. Is committed Labour to ‘common ownership of an attempt at comparison or connection the , distribution and even legitimate, since the two men saw exchange’ – from the Party’s constitution themselves as being engaged in such was the defining revisionist moment. So fundamentally different tasks? Blair, for instance, having asserted the principle of ‘social justice’, rejected Labour’s The first and major part of this essay, traditional means of achieving it (state therefore, will be to provide a historical ownership and control of the commanding taxonomy of the key connections between heights of the economy and progressive Christianity and the labour movement. It taxation). ‘… Labour has returned to its will consider the religious backgrounds values and is now seeking the clearest and of the ‘founding fathers’, the place of most effective ways of putting them into Nonconformity, the influence of early practice … liberating us from the terrible Christian Socialism, the work of R.H. tyranny of confusing means and ends’.13 Tawney, and the Catholic tradition in We will return to this argument later, but the party.16 For convenience, these are suffice it to say for the moment that the split chronologically into nineteenth and separation between means and ends is twentieth century engagements. hardly sustainable. 7 Building Jerusalem? Introduction

We will suggest that these Christian in Revelation 21, the very Jerusalem which traditions – sometimes collectively Blake envisioned labouring to build in called Christian Socialism, though this England’s green and pleasant land. should not be identified solely with those who have called themselves Christian This story has provided a powerful Socialists – are characterised by an grounding for thinking about equality as emphasis on two separate but closely a proper feature of human relationships, interrelated foundations. First and anticipating the future hope. Sociologist foremost, they are marked by a critique Michael Mann has observed how the of ‘the market’, by which we mean the congregations of the early Church provided abstract system of economic relations that a kind of rival organisation to the empire, casts all participants as self interested, offering a better sense of meaning and contract-making individuals maximising belonging than did the political and social pecuniary interests. This critique has institutions of the empire. In the Church, been unashamedly ethical before being those from excluded communities were functional, which is to say that it relies ‘made at home in the universe’ as members primarily on how the market fails to of an egalitarian fellowship which ‘had recognise human dignity rather than on universal significance in relation to ultimate how it can be proved evidentially to be meaning … fused the sacred and the secular, inefficient or irrational.17 the spiritual and material to provide a transcendent society’.18 Christian Socialism, which has lent its imaginative, linguistic and intellectual Second, therefore, the Christian Socialist resources to the wider movement, has tradition has tended towards a strong therefore been rightly bracketed with view of the diffusion of power and the other ‘ethical’ socialisms. But although it redemption of social relationships through has fed from and into them, it rests on non-statist means. Theologically speaking, unique foundations. In its engagement of the Church itself is in its essence a vision theology and practice with the whole gamut of social order which emphasises equality, of political, cultural and anthropological justice relationships and fraternity: by questions, Christian social witness draws faithfully being what it should be it can on the eschatological story of a redeemed claim to offer an embodied and actual social and political reality, which honours change in conditions (and the fact that both the created dignity of human beings the Church has not always lived up to and the ultimate realisation of peace and these aspirations partly explains the justice. Metaphorically speaking, this is visceral reaction and protest against the captured in the image of the New Jerusalem churches from early Labour leaders). Having 8 Building Jerusalem? Introduction

generated from within itself powerful its wrong turns as its achievements. On the resources for social change, the Church has occasions where it has sacrificed specifically rarely seen the state as the only agency Christian symbols and practices, it has failed capable of mobilising against injustice to offer anything substantial or distinctive through, for example, taxation and welfare to that labour tradition and allowed itself spending. The problem is not just the to become or to be made into an anaemic particular system of market capitalism, such proxy of other types of ethical socialism. that it can be replaced by a better and modified version or managed by the state, The third section of this essay, under the but the wider degradation of human values title ‘Twenty-first century engagements’, and the way this disfigures any market, or will provide a more systematic reflection on indeed, any state. This view is most explicit the current ideological position of the Party in Roman Catholic Social Teaching, but and a consideration of the implications of present too in the early Christian Socialists the theological themes that have arisen in and R.H. Tawney. The Christian tradition, the historical survey. Here, this document like other ethical socialisms, is therefore will be most useful to those who want to disposed towards non-statist responses reflect on the opportunities, obligations and to the problem of economic and political difficulties for Christians who want to vote disadvantage. for, support, or become a member of the Labour Party. It will offer a critique, from Practically, this has meant the organisation the best resources of Christian Socialism, of working people in communities both of the Party as it is. The key argument will within and beyond the Church, education be that for quite understandable electoral (and this again not necessarily through the and theoretical reasons, Labour has (now agency of the state), and the reorganisation self-consciously) adopted an essentially of capital through the encouragement of liberal philosophical position, vis-à-vis cooperatives. In other words, a problem both the economy and society. Marxism which is in its nature cultural, moral and and Fabianism, whose arguments against theological demands cultural, moral and capitalism were mounted respectively theological solutions, which will create against its self-destructive tendencies ‘spaces in which fellowship can become a and its inefficiencies, have both been lived reality’.19 proved wrong. This rendered most of the traditional intellectual commitments of the Of course, it is unnecessary and indeed left obsolete or irrelevant, and meant that unhelpful to offer a defence or justification the only remaining tools are a modified for any and every religious intervention on welfarism (itself heavily dependent on the political left; we can learn as much from economic growth via the market economy) 9 Building Jerusalem? Introduction

and light touch economic management, nothing except ‘stuff’, without any chiefly in the form of regulating to substantial enhancement of freedom ameliorate the worst effects of the market or improvement in social relations. This it has sought to liberalise. This is the ‘Third malady is veiled (though ever more thinly) Way’. by the Labour Party’s contemporary linguistic ‘eirenicons’, such as ‘social justice’, ’s unique contribution ‘progressivism’, and ‘collective action’, to political practice is a combination all of which are strikingly non-specific in of … state collectivism with a robust meaning.22 What can not be hidden is the market economics. This is the idea massive loss of confidence in the Labour that capitalism in the form it takes in Party amongst the working poor and financial markets is the most efficient indebted. means of distributing resources, pursuing prosperity and protecting liberty. The essay will conclude by suggesting The withdrawal of Labour as a force that the Labour Party should open up within the economy – confining itself again a conversation about what Labour to spending the money generated by aspires to achieve, a matter that has financial deregulation on welfare – has long been assumed to be settled while proved to be decisive in determining its the ‘means’ to achieving ends have been fate. 20 endlessly deliberated upon. Can Labour become a movement which is not simply While for the Fabians the state was the an aspirant to government, but a social ‘eudemonic machine’, the agency through movement which values , religious which happiness is delivered, now choice life, local communities and economies, and autonomy within the market are both the importance of the place of work and the substance and the driver of the good employee involvement? life. Labour has therefore departed from the intellectual spaces in which it was birthed.21 In pressing this question, it presumes no more than to add another voice to an What Labour now lacks, therefore, is a existing chorus on the centre left which sustainable critique of the market and emphasises locality, mutuality, a rejection its worst effects. One consequence is of bureaucratic statism and of a welfarism its increasing distance from the classes addicted to the tax-take from a rampant amongst which its political support consumer economy and freewheeling has traditionally been built. In a way financial service sector. But the Christian frighteningly reminiscent of Tawney’s tradition cannot simply be homogenised warnings, the Labour Party risks offering into the range of existing opinion that is 10 Building Jerusalem? Introduction

dissatisfied with the place of the labour other than a study in the diminishing movement. Christians in the Labour Party historical influence of Christianity on must practice and understand their own the Labour Party. It would leave the distinctive symbols, investigate their own contemporary Labour Party, and the narrative. In doing so, the Party will make contemporary Church, untouched by any itself the best possible fellow traveller for expectation that they should be addressed other ethical socialists. Christians on the by the Christian Labour tradition. left must now emphasise the ‘Christian’ elements of their thinking much more There are a number of problems with this strongly. historiography, and this study consciously departs from it. It would be impossible to *** deny that many early Labour MPs left their congregations through sheer frustration Religious belief has posed a problem to at the latter’s persisting commitment to labour historians. Most of the publications , or that in Labour’s second half produced to mark the Labour Party’s century there was a series of senior labour centenaries were perfunctory in their leaders who completely disassociated treatment of religion: themselves from Christian backgrounds (Gaitskell, Foot, Crosland and Callaghan). The discipline [of labour history], after But this secularising narrative fails to all, was in its infancy in the 1960s, the account for instances of the Christian decade when the thesis that modernity tradition occasioning continued social and equals secularisation was at its height. political engagement, the recrudescence Contemplating organizations they of the Christian Socialist Movement in saw as being on the advanced wing of the 1960s or 1990s, Blair’s implicit re- that modernity no doubt made it easy appropriation of the idealist tradition, or for labour historians to conclude that Brown’s persistent use of Biblical language ‘modern working-class movements have and metaphor to capture and express developed an overwhelming secular, Labour aspirations. indeed often militantly anti-religious ’.23 Yet some would still wish to argue (particularly in view of increasing On such an understanding, religion is simply secularisation and multiculturalism) that the chrysalis in which socialism incubated, the Christian contribution is among the discarded as ‘modern’ class identity least influential streams of thought in took hold. Under such historiographical the Party’s history. Two observations assumptions, this essay could be nothing must be made in response, which also 11 Building Jerusalem? Introduction

serve to justify this short study. Firstly, all Act (1906), but by that time it had already had the effect of galvanising previously cautious trade unions allegedly secular institutions and processes to seek Parliamentary representation. are ways of imagining space and time, 2 Gould, P. The Unfinished Revolution, Abacus, 1999, organising human beings around stories 25. He emphasises religious language and metaphor of human nature and human destiny and, quoting Ben Pimlott, the analogy between the which have deep theological analogues. Socialist Commonwealth and the second coming. Unwittingly, he is picking up on the important theme Secular political theory is really another of the ‘eschatology’ of political movements. theology in disguise.24 The question is 3 He was appealing, in Christopher Hill’s phrase, to a not necessarily whether a political party ‘myth of lost rights’, and to do so was to mount the is religious or secular, but what kind of most powerful possible argument for human equality. theology sits beneath the ideology and See Hill, C. Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the 17th practices of a political party. Secondly, as Century, Pimlico, 2001, 46–48. The same argument David Marquand has observed, ideology was used by Thomas Paine and Kier Hardie. is more than just a policy programme. 4 Rowland, C. ‘Practical Theology and Equality’, in Rather, ideologies are ‘thought practices’, Storrar, W.F. and Morton, A.R. (eds.), Public Theology compounds of genuinely conscious beliefs for the 21st Century, T&T Clark, 2004, 332. and unconscious assumptions, encoded 5 See Theos/ComRes polling on faith and voting in and transmitted through ritual and intention: campaigndirector.moodia.com/Client/ Theos/Files/TheosPoliticalPollFinalFeb10.pdf, with myth. Ideology shapes preconceptions useful commentary by Nick Spencer, ‘There is no and influences behaviour, not only or even Christian vote’, (online), guardian. mainly at the level of the head, but also at co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/26/religion- the level of the heart.25 In an era when all election-voting-blocs, 26 April 2010, accessed 29 July 2010 political parties are sitting light to ideology, 6 we must not imagine that they can escape The Methodism and Marx phrase is often attributed to . Labour Party politician Michael the ideological challenge of creating and Cocks (Chief Whip from 1979–87) claimed his father, sustaining a political consensus. A party can a congregational minister and Professor of Systematic not, in the end, be a supporter of only ‘what Theology, coined the phrase. It was, of course, Alistair Campbell who interrupted a interview with works’, divorced from an ethical conception David Margolick of Vanity Fair when the conversation of what it is proper to seek to achieve, a turned to Blair’s religious beliefs. He is reported to vision of the good. have said, ‘I’m sorry. We don’t do God’. The phrase has become a sobriquet for the debate around the place of faith in public life. Notes 7 Pelling, H. Origins of the Labour Party, Oxford University Press, 1965, 118. This was probably a 1 In the Taff Vale Railway Co v Amalgamated Society backhanded reference to the Hyndmanite Social of Railway Servants [1901] AC 426, judges ruled that Democratic Federation. unions could be held liable for loss of profits during strike action, effectively making striking impossible. The judgement was reversed by the Trades Disputes

12 Building Jerusalem? Introduction

8 For an example of just such an analysis, see Koyzis, instance, with South American liberation theology. D.T. Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey and Christian It is historically limited, and so ignores the radical Critique of Contemporary Ideologies, IVP, 2003. elements of the Puritan tradition. In fact, all this essay can succeed in doing is giving a thumbnail 9 Tawney, R.H. The Radical Tradition, Penguin, 1964, sketch of a series of nineteenth and twentieth century 146, quoted in Greenleaf, W.H. The British Political engagements. Tradition Volume Two: The Ideological Heritage, Routledge, 1983, 357. David Koyzis identifies five 17 According to some commentators, the Christian specific bifurcations: the phenomenon of common tradition has afforded the wider movement a more ownership v. ideological socialism, socialism as an sustainable critique of capitalism than alternatives, external system v. socialism as an existing conscience, such as Marxism or Fabian Socialism. See, for instance, state socialism v. non-statist socialist , Milbank, J. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular gradualist v. revolutionary socialism and utopian v. Reason, 2nd ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2006, 197–199. scientific socialism. Koyzis, 28 18 Mann, M. Sources of Social Power, quoted in 10 Crosland, A. The Future of Socialism, Constable, Forrester, D.B. On Human Worth, SCM, 2001, 195. 2006, 53–59. 19 White, S. ‘Which philosophy, Whose tradition’, in 11 Other themes included firstly, the desire to Grayson, R.S. and Rutherford, J. (eds.), After the Crash, appropriate the rewards of capital by abolition Soundings, Social Liberal Forum and , 2010, of private property or through state ownership or 112. control; the restructuring of economic life away 20 Glasman, M. ‘The Common Good’, in Harrington, P. from unrestricted competition and the motivation and Burks, B.K. (eds.), What Next for Labour? Ideas for of personal profit; the desire for worker control of the Progressive Left, Demos, 2009, 39–40. industry; finally, the Labour tradition held closely to the objective of full employment. 21 Ibid., 40. 12 Ibid., 75. 22 A proposition that attempts to harmonize conflicting viewpoints (from the Greek,eirēnikos – of 13 Blair, T. New Britain: My Vision for a Young Country, or concerning peace, or eirēnē – peace). Fourth Estate, 1996, xii. 23 Hobsbawn, E. Worlds of Labour, quote in Catterall, P. 14 This is not a novel argument; see, for instance, ‘The Distinctiveness of British Socialism? Religion and Wright, T. Socialisms: Old and New, Routledge, 1996. the Labour Party c1900–1939’ in Worley, M. (ed.), The 15 Leach, R. ‘Christian Socialism: The Historical and Foundations of the Labour Party: Identities, Cultures Contemporary Significance of Christian Socialism and Perspectives 1900–39, Ashgate, 2009, 144–145. within the Labour Party’, Political Studies Association 24 Cavanaugh, W. Theopolitical Imagination, Annual Conference, 2002. Accessed at psa.ac.uk/ Continuum, 2002, 2. journals/pdf/5/2002/leach.pdf 25 Marquand, D. The New Reckoning: Capitalism, 16 This is by no means an exhaustive list of Christian States, and Citizens, Polity, 1997, 74. engagements with the political left: it is specifically British and there is therefore no engagement, for

13 Nineteenth century engagements

Nineteenth century engagements

The Labour Party emerged at the end of a century of social and economic tumult: a doubling of the population between 1840 and 1901, massive urbanisation and technological development at an incredible pace. The outcome over a century was an improved standard of living for the population as a whole and over time, but with many individuals and communities losing out on the way. The working class – urban and rural – were forced into various attempts at negotiating the new social reality. These were both economic (Corn Law agitation, strikes, machine breaking, food price riots) and political (Chartism). In hindsight, historians have tended to combine these disparate phenomena into the slow but great awakening of working which finally and inevitably found political expression in the Labour Party.

In reality, the history of the Industrial Age of Atonement Revolution is much more complex and The ambiguous position of the churches – contested.1 But increased industrialisation, both established and Nonconformist – vis- developing worker organisation, the slow à-vis the industrial revolution is reasonably growth of the franchise, and the ongoing well known. It was Rev W.R. Hay who read disregard for human life in the industrial the Riot Act at Peterloo in 1819 before and residential environment (evidenced by sabres were drawn. The role of the clergy Engels in in 1844, Booth in as magistrates, defending the social order in 1889 and 1891, and Benjamin against commoners’ appeals for recognition Seeboham Rowntree in York in 1899) and justice, exemplified for many how the prepared the soil for the growth of working Church could collude with the interests of class political power. As we will see, this the rich and was a source of significant anti- power was often, if not usually, at an arms clericalism amongst the working class. length from the theoretical socialism of Marx, Engels or Henry Hyndman. One result of the antagonism between radicals and religious authorities was the Chartist church demonstrations

14 Nineteenth century engagements

throughout the summer of 1839. In order The evangelicals shared with political to demonstrate the equality of all men economists an atomistic view of society before God, Chartists would take the lead in in which each individual was responsible town processions ahead of the wealth and for his actions and made decisions powerful. To expose the Church’s hostility independently of others. Since the economic to the poor, they would attend in working system of such a society would regulate aprons and clogs. To protest against the itself by predictable laws (which many, like establishment of private property in a the evangelicals, saw as divinely ordained), church, they would take rented pews. To tampering with the system was considered remind the clergy of true religion, they neither necessary nor desirable.4 would request that they expound biblical texts which would deal with the claims of Ironically, one of the key texts for the Age the poor. The clergy responded by preaching of Atonement was William Wilberforce’s A on submission to authorities, contentment, Practical View, arguing as it did that the and proper attention to the afterlife. On existing social order combined ‘the greatest 15th August the Chartists of Sheffield, measure of temporal comforts and spiritual after arrests, protests and more arrests, privileges’. The poor should be humble, eventually found the church barred against ‘since their situation, with all its evils, is their entry.2 better than they have deserved at the hands of God’. The human condition was of Rev R. Carus Wilson, preaching on Job secondary concern to the state of the soul. 34.29, told Preston Chartists that they ‘I should consider the salvation of a single should ascribe ‘the evils of their condition soul of more value than the deliverance of a to their own misconduct’, and assured them whole empire from pauperism’, said Thomas that they would find repose ‘on the bosom Chalmers.5 Much of what we now think of of God’ if they would but live a godly and as ground breaking social action on the quiet life. This message, among the more part of the evangelicals – church schools for sympathetic delivered by clergy in response instance – improved the material lot of their to the church protests, exemplifies the social beneficiaries as a by-product of their efforts thinking of the Anglican establishment to improve their moral lives. of the time, and throughout much of the rest of the nineteenth century. During It is a matter of debate whether what Boyd Hilton has called the ‘Age evangelicals were simply baptising of Atonement’, ‘evangelical’ thought commonly held economic principles, or both shaped and justified the economic whether they genuinely derived economic and social assumptions which underlay principles from theological convictions. the policies of competitive capitalism.3 More likely, this ‘evangelicalism’ was a 15 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

distinctive blend of stern Victorian moralism, might be useful in bringing the poor into Malthusian economics and a strong aversion the Christian fold’.6 to the agency of the state, particularly in the relief of poverty. There were certainly Whether such a functional consideration also evangelicals who dissented from was in the mind of the Christian Socialists, laissez faire economic principles, notably to whom we now turn, is debatable. From Lord Shaftesbury and Richard Oastler, Tory genuine theological reflection driven by paternalists and advocates for the Ten the desire for a fuller understanding, albeit Hours’ Bill. It remained the case, however, one which served for a more sympathetic that the main body of opinion in the reading of the position of working classes, established Church put its weight behind different theological themes, which the dominant economic ideas of the age, lent themselves to different theological which both symbolised and entrenched its conclusions, began to emerge. failure to identify and sympathise with the plight of the working poor. Victorian Christian Socialism In 1848, an eclectic group of Christians In the second half of the nineteenth century – a theologian, an author and a lawyer – the laissez faire economic paradigm, and gathered in London to discuss the Church’s its supposed theological justification, were role in responding to the Chartist cause. on the wane. Hilton suggests that the Internationally, it was a year of violent horror of the Irish potato famine served as working class uprisings (in France, Germany, a kind of reductio ad absurdum against the Italy and Hungary) and of the publication of arguments for Providence – what kind of Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. When the God would deal so harshly and arbitrarily Chartists gathered for a mass meeting on with an entire nation? Increased journalistic Kennington Common on 10th April, there interest in the working conditions of the was a whiff of a revolution in the air. poor, moreover, raised public awareness of the worst cases of sheer destitution, making Charles Kingsley, a 28-year-old author it harder to maintain the belief that the and clergyman, had travelled to London poor obviously or necessarily deserved their in the hope of dissuading workmen from condition. Others have argued that the too precipitous a demonstration. He was Church simply began to acknowledge that introduced by F.D. Maurice (a Professor of it no longer commanded the attention of Theology at King’s College London and the working man, and that simple prudence chaplain at Lincoln’s Inn) to J.M. Ludlow demanded a theological reassessment: (a French-educated lawyer). Kingsley and ‘some amelioration of … living conditions Ludlow went together to observe the Chartist demonstration but found, before 16 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

crossing Waterloo Bridge, that it had already so predictably survived for only six years. reached its anticlimactic conclusion. That Its public effect was limited, its political evening Kingsley composed placards which importance slight, but it nonetheless would be addressed to the ‘Workmen of represents the increasing legitimacy of England’. They were supportive of workers, Christian social witness and an important but not the Charter itself, for it would not ‘of first fruit of a tradition that began to itself make them free’.7 Mere constitutional, achieve practical political traction in the political, or economic reform – the twentieth century. substance of Chartist demands – was not enough; all these could only be predicated The group was socialist by self-ascription, on a more fundamental reconsideration of rather than by a shared human relationships. The Victorian Christian – testament again to the flexibility and Socialists, for instance, generally opposed diversity of usages of the word. Ludlow was any extension of the franchise, unless both most familiar and most comfortable accompanied by appropriate education and with systematic treatments of social an increment in the working man’s virtue. problems and, having been brought up in In a notorious phrase, which can too easily France, described himself as a ‘Fourierist’ be dismissed as Victorian ignorance but is and introduced the concept of cooperative probably a much more revealing reflection industry to the wider group.8 Maurice, on the nature of citizenship, Kingsley’s on the other hand, was often at pains to placard asked that ‘Workers of England be establish a lack of familiarity with French wise, and then you must be free, for you will socialist theorists9, and his definition of be fit to be free’. the problem and the nature of the socialist rejoinder was so broad that it would have What brought these three together – along covered many radical Tories of his day. with the others who came to be part of ‘Anyone who recognises the principle of co- their informal network of what have become operation as a stronger and truer principle known as Victorian Christian Socialists – than that of competition, has the right to was on the one hand a fear of the onrush the honour or the disgrace of being called a of political change bringing with it the socialist’10 – Charles Kingsley, author of The possibility of social upheaval, combined Water-Babies and Alton Locke, was indeed with a conviction that the grievances of the more in the mould of a Tory paternalist. working classes – in this case, the Chartists – were legitimate and should be redressed. Maurice was the centrifugal force of Their movement embodied a tension the movement and, as John Atherton between and radicalism, both has argued, his social teaching was a drawing on theological first principles, and direct consequence of his theological 17 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

beliefs.11 There were several important Sin, then, is not a problem of stains on the strands to his thinking. First, Maurice conscience of the individual but is man’s assailed the mechanical ‘sin and salvation’ rejection of God’s ordering of creation, the evangelicalism that had allowed the divine and universal constitution. When theological legitimizing of Malthusian an individual seeks to ‘set up a separate economics for over a century. Writing to his individual life’ which makes no account of future wife, he spoke of the ground of his his obligations or duties to others, he ‘does difference with evangelicals: divest himself of his glory as a man’ and fails to fulfil his given duties. In the same [They] make sin the ground of all way, Christ’s atoning death spoke not just of theology, whereas to me it seems that the cleansing of individual consciences but the living and holy God is ground of of ‘the revelation of an order which sustains it, and sin the departure of the state all the intercourse and society of men … the of union with Him, into which he has revelation of that perfect harmony to which brought us.12 we look forward when God shall gather up all things in Christ.’ For Maurice, sin is a secondary consideration – not, as the evangelicals of Second, Maurice strongly emphasised that his day would have it – the starting point the ‘Kingdom of God’, the state of reformed of theology. Such a theology served to social relations advocated by Jesus in the distance Christianity from the concerns of New Testament, was a present reality, a material and public life, construing both sin condition of earthly society should we and salvation as an inward spiritual matter but realise it – ‘And what do such words and the concern of individuals. ‘Men feel’, [epiphany, revealing, etc.] imply, but the full he wrote, ‘that they are not merely lost evidence and demonstration of that which is creatures; they look up to the heaven above now; the dispersion of all the shadows and them, and ask whether this is the whole appearances which have counterfeited it or account of their condition … If religion, they have hidden it from view?’ God, his will and say, will give us no explanation of these his character form the basis of all proper feelings, if it can only tell us about a fall theological, moral and ethical reflection. for the whole race, and an escape for a This was not just the proper grounding for few individuals of it, then our wants must theology, but for society as a whole: be satisfied without religion. Then begin Chartism and Socialism, and whatever … my business … is to show that economy schemes make rich men tremble’.13 and politics … must have ground beneath themselves, that society is not made anew by arrangements of ours, but is 18 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

to be regenerated by finding the law journal which ran to seventeen editions in and ground of its order and harmony, the summer of 1848, did address key radical the only secret of its existence, in God. questions but again, while sympathising This must seem to you an unpractical with what it saw as legitimate economic and unchristian method; to me it is the and political grievances, tended to contest only one which makes action possible, the usual radical answers. It opposed the and Christianity anything more than an prospect of the extension of the franchise artificial religion for the use of believers without further moral and educational .... The Kingdom of Heaven is to me the reform and criticised Chartist tactics. This great practical existing reality which is to was not simply a matter of Maurice’s and renew the earth and make it a habitation Kingsley’s innate conservatism; rather, for blessed spirits instead of demons.14 they feared the prescription of solutions that would exacerbate the problem of a Maurice was insistent on the ontological divided and antagonistic society. Reformers, reality of – as opposed to the aspiration Maurice argued, could hardly restore society towards – human brotherhood under the to health by operating from the ‘same fatherhood of God.15 The Church was tasked vicious premises’, assuming ‘land, goods, (and one of his main prescriptions for social money, labour, some subjects of possession, change was dialogue between different to be the basis for society … true radical classes, mediated by the Church) to witness reform and radical conservation must go to and reflect this reformation of conscience much deeper and say: “Human relations and relationships – not as post-mortem not only should lie, but do lie beneath all reality for some, but as an existing state these …”’.18 for all now. Thus, the Church could remain ‘the supporter of the existing orders’, but It was in this idiom that the Christian equally become ‘a teacher and example to Socialists would justify the small number of those orders respecting their duties and worker cooperatives that they established responsibilities; by removing the hatred around London. In the 1820s Robert Owen which their forgetfulness of those duties had argued that faulty production and [causes]’.16 distribution were the root of poverty and want, and cooperative organisations were It was in this sense that the movement thus an economic and social necessity. was socialist, tapping the use of the term Christian Socialist cooperatives, however, which ‘applied loosely to all forms of radical tended to be addressed in different terms – thought involving the cooperation of the ‘The direct object of Christian cooperation working class for their own benefit’.17 Politics was to bring Christ into every part of for the People, the movement’s short-lived common life,’ wrote Thomas Arnold, a key 19 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

influence on Maurice, ‘to make human 2. That true workmen must be fellow- society one living body’.19 Ludlow had seen workmen, not rivals. such initiatives in operation in France, but the key to Maurice’s enthusiastic 3. That a principle of justice, not of involvement in and support of them selfishness, must regulate exchanges20 between 1850 and 1854 was the fact that they chimed with his theology. Drawing on The associations came to grief on a variety the critique of competition as ‘the selfish of causes, though the legislation for which principle’, a ‘monstrous and anarchical the Christian Socialists had campaigned condition’ and a ‘struggle to get for oneself (The Industrial and Provident Societies’ and prevent anyone else from getting’, Act, 1852) remained of benefit to the cooperatives would eliminate class attrition, wider cooperative movement. Interestingly, not by social or political transformation these associations were directly criticised but by goodwill and by fellowship between by Beatrice Webb. She distinguished classes. The preamble to the constitution of between co-operative production and co- the Association for Promoting Industrial and operative distribution and argued that the Provident Societies put the case in expressly former remained individualist, that they theological terms, according to Charles would tend to create further competition Raven, drawing on the Pauline teaching of between associations or monopolies, and membership: that in any case their material failure was sufficient to prove that any attempt at self The Promoters of Working Men’s government in industry was futile, not least Associations, having united together for because of the increasing technological and the purpose of applying the principles of organisational complexity of industry. We Christianity to trade and industry, and cannot resolve the issue here, but suffice desiring to state more definitely what it to say her criticisms are witness to the those principles are, as they find them ideological and methodological tensions set forth in Christ’s gospel, that they which existed within the emerging labour may serve as the basis of a society to be movement around the turn of the century. formed for the objects after mentioned, declare: As the associations faltered, the attention of the movement, and of Maurice in 1. That human society is a body particular, turned towards educational consisting of many members, not a endeavour (this culminating in the collection of warring atoms. foundation of the still surviving Working Men’s College).21 This was also the point at which the inherent theological and 20 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

ideological tensions amongst the Christian of the state as such as being the agent of Socialists began to make themselves felt. achieving such an end: Excepting the work on associations, little agreement was reached between individuals There is, therefore, one great error to be other than a rejection of existing social avoided when determining the functions evils.22 Maurice in particular was unwilling of government. Government cannot to countenance any form of political action create movement and life where there (understood as inviting or promoting the is none … the efficiency of government involvement of the machinery of the state). grows in inverse proportion to its The Kingdom of God was a present reality cumbrousness …24 – it did not need legislation, but recognition as the rightful paradigm of relationships The difference between Maurice and Ludlow between classes and individuals. This led was that, for the latter, social conditions him to what seemed to his colleagues as they were degraded men and set then, as they seem now, to be peculiar and them against each other. Thus a dialectic unhelpful positions (opposing, for instance relationship was established in Ludlow’s the formation of a Health League which mind between the witness of theology and would call for Government action on public the practice of politics – men could not health issues). Maurice simply stopped fully participate in the Kingdom until their talking about Christian Socialism. brotherhood was recognised in the practical business of politics. For him the state was Ludlow, no less insistently Christian in clearly still limited and conditional (the his analysis, was nevertheless more open error of the French socialists, he argued, to practical political reform. He was, for was to suppose that a change in the instance, in support of the extension of the social machinery alone could ‘work out franchise (if in the cautious terms of his all the purposes for humanity’) but this day) and called the property qualification was held in tension with the fact that it for gaining the vote and for becoming an was a legitimate tool (‘but a means, not MP a ‘Godless contrivance’. In its place, he a principle’). In other words, he made an supported a ‘tax and education’ franchise. early distinction, significant in later socialist Nevertheless, like the others he prioritised a traditions right through to New Labour, holistic vision of the good society, not one in between ends and means, between society which working class interests were pursued and culture and government. at the expense of all else (he wanted ‘the completion of the national fabric, and not Christian Socialism of a kind more the usurpation of dominion by a class’23). sympathetic to the activity of the state Nor was he, by any means, an advocate flowered later in the century. The Guild of 21 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

St Matthew (1877), the Christian Socialist ignored). First, Maurice renewed theology, League (1894) and the Christian Social drawing the attention of the Church Union (1889) owed something of their towards social and political issues of which theology to Maurice, but his mid-century it had been negligent in the preceding work was an important first fruit of a years. If this did not have an immediate theological engagement with the needs reforming effect on the wider Church, it of the working classes and the problems paved the way, along with the Oxford of the market. Maurice’s theology had movement, for later developments under an enduring impact, as did the network’s the likes of Temple and Tawney. In the work on education and associations, but oft quoted phrase, Maurice was as much the membership and leadership of later about ‘socialising Christianity’ as he was organisations was largely distinct from it. about ‘Christianising socialism’. To refer to ‘Christian Socialism’, then, is not to point to *** a shared ideological heritage, but express a status as a fellow traveller. Victorian Christian Socialism sits in a peculiar place in the genealogy of the Second, the Christian Socialists always labour movement. As we have already insisted on the importance of properly observed it was – with the notable resolved human relationships and on exception of its work in associations and this count felt instinctively that the state education – a marginal influence in the could never ‘work out all the purposes tradition. Its intellectual genesis is with of humanity’. Yet this is not to accede to the likes of Coleridge and Ruskin, and thus philosophical or practical liberalism; to it is clearly a socialism of society, not one speak of the ‘purposes of humanity’ was of economic or class analysis. Although to invoke community and brotherhood. the network gathered supporters from a Victorian Christian Socialism held in range of profiles, including those with an tension (as did many subsequent Christian uncertain Christian faith (Edward Neale, engagements on ) the essential need for instance), it was founded on a strongly for cooperation and commonality and a theological critique and response to critique of individualism with a resistance industrial problems. to the idea that the activity of the state in itself could embody that cooperation. Victorian Christian Socialism, therefore, left two intellectual legacies – one to the Founding fathers and Church (which has been much celebrated) Nonconformity and one to the labour movement (which, Of course, Victorian Christian Socialism if anything, has been latterly and mainly predates the formation of the Labour Party, 22 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

and indeed many of the earlier institutions As part of a wider movement they laboured, of the labour movement. The only prominent of course, alongside many who did not member of the network to become an share their faith as such, but would share elected politician was Thomas Hughes, a something of their vision of a more just Liberal MP for Lambeth and later Frome. society. Equally, there were those with whom there were some cultural and One inheritor of the Christian Socialist philosophical tensions, not least Hyndman mantle, Stuart Headlam (a flamboyant (an avowed – and wealthy – atheist) and Anglican priest and founder of the Guild the Social Democratic Federation. Hardie of St Matthew), served on the Executive demurred from joining in spite of a shared Committee of the on three socialism, finding the atmosphere of the separate occasions between 1886 and 1911. Federation beery (Hardie was a lifelong Typically maverick, he offered some support teetotaller), irreverent and cocksure.25 The to Hyndman’s Marxist and secularist Social Fabians were something else again. Beatrice Democratic Federation, and spoke at the Webb was not without particular mystical ‘Bloody Sunday’ protest in Trafalgar Square beliefs, though she could not be described in February 1887. His feelings toward in any sense as Christian. Politically Labour Party were less speaking, the Fabians thought the ILP to be supportive. For him, it espoused a debased a ‘wrecking party, checkmating the more form of socialism and Kier Hardie was reasonable policy of permeation’. So the an unworthy leader. Whether it was his drivers of the development of the ILP were simple untheorised Christianity (this was provincial men, looking pragmatically to certainly one ground on which Hyndman advance their peoples’ interests, drawing disliked Hardie), or his simple untheorised from theoretical socialism but not as socialism that Headlam objected to, is not dogmatic purists. Their outlook stamped immediately clear. its imprint on the ILP which, in Snowden’s words, derived its inspiration more from The Christianity of the ‘founding fathers’ the Sermon on the Mount than from the of the Labour Party – Kier Hardie, Phillip teachings of economists.26 Snowden, , , , etc. – is part of the What was the nature and significance of mythology of the party, and the part of that the religious beliefs of early Labour leaders? mythology which is usually being rehearsed Did such beliefs shape and influence their when the phrase ‘more to Methodism than political thinking or practice and, if so, how? Marx’ is deployed. First, it is worth noting a discontinuity between the kind of Christian Socialism 23 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

we have discussed so far, and the faith of Second, this is also the appropriate point to early Labour leaders. Though these men address the aphorism that the Labour Party and women were Christians and socialists, ‘owes more to Methodism than to Marx’. they were not Christian Socialists in the The phrase is, perhaps, somewhat overused same sense as Maurice, Ludlow, Headlam, and, more to the point, invoked to imply a Wescott or Gore. This is more than a range of arguments about the nature of the simply chronological point: the leaders of Labour Party: the relative lack of importance Labour were generally provincial working of theoretical socialism as compared to men, while the Christian Socialists were ‘ethical’ socialism of all kinds; the place by and large professionals; Hardie and his of Nonconformity and Dissent in the colleagues were political and union activists development of radical political positions; long before a single one of them became a the sheer number of Members of Parliament, Member of Parliament, while Maurice and and members of the Party, that have come his colleagues mostly avoided activism; from a Nonconformist background;27 and early Labour leaders were generally (though so on. This maxim is evocative of what, not exclusively – Lansbury being the most historically at least, has been the experience important exception) Nonconformist, but of many a Labour Party member, but it is the theology and construction of Christian a more complicated and interesting claim Socialism was profoundly Anglican, than has often been allowed. sometimes inclusively so (as in the case of Maurice), and sometimes militantly hostile As E.P. Thompson observed, ‘so much has to Nonconformity (as in the case of Stuart been said about the relationship between Headlam). Victorian Christian Socialism was Methodism and working class politics founded in a cerebral theology, forcing the that we might suppose that it was no Church to acknowledge its responsibilities in more than a nursing ground for Radical industrial and economic questions, whereas and organisers’.28 Briefly, the the theology of the early Labour leaders proposal faces a number of problems. was a fusion of the experience of the First, in an argument put most strongly material poverty of the working classes and by Thompson, Wesleyan Methodism was a ‘primitive’ biblical radicalism, not unlike politically reactionary, if not ‘odiously that of the Chartists active in the church subservient’. This was first and foremost protests. For many – including Kier Hardie a feature of Wesley’s own political – this worked itself out not just in support conservatism coming through his autocratic for the cause of Labour, but in pointed style of leadership, but it was mirrored aggression against churches, established by successive Methodist Conferences as and otherwise, if they were not giving mind they reaffirmed their unfeigned loyalty to to their duty to the poor. the King and sincere attachment to the 24 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

constitution. The statutes drawn up in the egalitarianism, even if it was one that year after Wesley’s death were explicit: Wesley and his immediate followers would ‘None of us shall either in writing or have preferred to ignore. Commentators conversation speak lightly or irreverently of have thus distinguished between the ways the Government’.29 Methodism, said Jabez in which Methodism was a form of faith Bunting (who supported the transportation for, or of, the poor. While autocratic and of the Methodist Tolpuddle Martyrs) ‘hates conservative in its leadership, it remained democracy and hates sin’.30 This was not egalitarian and appealing to the poor in the same brand of suspicion of democracy its theology. This tension between the as one held by Victorian Christian authoritarian and egalitarian strands Socialists, but one intimately bound up with resulted in the succession of the New Methodism’s reputation for sedition, which Connexion under Alexander Kilham in 1797 occasionally erupted in anti-Methodists and the Primitive Methodists in 1806, with riots. The leadership of Methodism, like consequences in the political sphere. These those of the older Dissenting traditions, types of congregation offered some support were liable to overcompensate by to the Chartists, while more orthodox emphasising their unstinting loyalty to the Methodists hounded radicals out of their state and its institutions. congregations as enthusiastically as did Anglicans. In 1834, one Rev Joseph Rayner None of this is to say that Methodism did Stephens, the son of a former president, had not have egalitarian tendencies. Thus, to resign from the Connexion rather than the Duchess of Buckingham wrote to the obey Conference orders to cease his radical Methodist Countess of Huntingdon: activity and campaigning against the new Poor Law. Five years later, his activities saw I Thank Your Ladyship for the information him sent to prison. concerning the Methodist lay preachers; their doctrines are most repulsive and Mainstream Methodism becomes, if strongly tinctured with impertinence anything, a movement for the poor, and disrespect towards their Superiors, and with the construction of expensive in perpetually endeavouring to level all buildings, and the subsequent introduction ranks and do away with all distinctions. of pew rents, even less than that. Attracting It is monstrous to be told that you have a the skilled working classes, it became heart as sinful as the common wretches the religion of the respectable, thrifty that crawl on the earth.31 and properly patriotic. The more radically inclined members were removed or removed Political egalitarianism, observed themselves from the mainstream movement, Thompson, is the consequence of spiritual and then themselves suffered from disunity 25 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

and schism, thus failing to exercise radical Thus, just as the labour movement was influence in the social and political arena. finding its political feet, Nonconformity was more likely to express outright hostility to Labour historian Henry Pelling observes it than offer support. It was precisely such that by the end of the nineteenth century, opposition that occasioned the formation Nonconformity as a whole had been of the Bradford Labour Church. In the run- enlisted by the Liberal Party.32 A variety up to the 1892 general election, wealthy of factors have been cited in explanation: Nonconformist ministers sat on the platform ministers’ dependence on generous laymen, at a meeting in support of a Liberal the wealthiest of whom were likely to opponent of the socialist candidate, the be those enriched during the Industrial Congregationalist Ben Tillett. , Revolution, and therefore most likely to be also a Christian Socialist, stood up and Liberals; shared political interests such as warned them, ‘if you persist in opposing the the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act; Labour movement … we shall establish our and the exclusion of working congregants own Labour Church.’34 by pew rents, again because of the financial dominance of wealthy congregants. Exactly what is it, then, that the Labour Although Wesley himself was insistent on Party owes to Methodism? What is clear the social nature of the Christian faith, and is that at some point Nonconformity resistant to any move which would make it broke its historical relationship with the ‘solitary’, individualism had become at least Liberals (as did Catholicism, following as much of feature of the Nonconformist the settling of the Irish question) and mindset as democracy. Hugh Price Hughes, formed a new one with Labour. By the a Welsh Methodist theologian and Christian interwar years, Nonconformity was heavily Socialist in the latter half of the nineteenth represented in the Party. In 1929 Arthur century, wrote of Henderson, intermittently leader of the Labour Party and in Middle Class, well dressed and well-fed Ramsay MacDonald’s minority government, Dissenters … in great danger of assuming observed that: an attitude of more or less conscious antagonism to the New Democracy … It is a demonstrable fact that the bulk Very rarely indeed are the arrangements of the members of the Parliamentary of Methodist churches adapted to the Labour Party at any given time during tastes and preferences of the working the last twenty five years had graduated classes. Office and authority are almost into their wider sphere of activity via everywhere in the hands of tradesmen the Sunday School, the Bible Class, the and professional men.33 temperance society or the pulpit.35 26 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

Of the English and Welsh MPs in the raising funds, and communicating from inter war period, nearly half were one part of the kingdom to another, may Nonconformist and less than 10 be reckoned among the incident evils per cent had no religion.36 A similar which have resulted from it.39 overrepresentation of Nonconformity has been observed at other times and in other E.P. Thompson observed that once the parts of the Party. Why this should be the transference was made, the same dedication case is a matter of some debate. Pelling which enabled men to serve in the church offers no substantial explanation, except could be seen in those who held office in to say that where religious consciousness trade union and Hampden Clubs, educated remained strong, socialism ‘took on most themselves far into the night, and had the completely the guise of religion’,37 while responsibility of conducting working class elsewhere socialism pursued its ordinary organisations.40 Thompson, of course, is path, described by Beatrice Webb as the speaking of the emergence of an organised ‘flight of emotion away from the service of working class in industrial England, but God to the service of Man’.38 It could be it takes no great leap of imagination to that after periods of Liberal inaction on see the direct implications for the Labour key Nonconformist issues – temperance, Party: ‘Nonconformity’, claimed Ramsay secular (non-Anglican) education and MacDonald, ‘has trained our speakers in its disestablishment – the majority probably pulpits and fashioned devoted workers in its felt that their bread would be buttered just Sunday Schools’.41 G.M. Young’s suggestion as well by the Labour Party. Kier Hardie, for that old Labour leaders were ‘trained in instance, was a temperance campaigner and the administrative habits of Methodism, a supporter of secular education. equally accustomed to declamation and conference’42 is widely endorsed by Labour This is no doubt true of the political issues historians. Greenleaf recalls that even which were the stock in trade of the Beatrice Webb, during a period of time Nonconformist tradition, but it ignores an living in Bacup in Lancashire, remarked on important dynamic. As early as 1820, the the way in which the chapel and its forms poet Robert Southey suggested that being prepared the community for democracy part of such a community offered some and for self-government.43 It was not form of preparation for public life: Methodism’s theology that flowed into the Labour Party, but the ‘fluency of its social Perhaps the manner in which Methodism life, plain common sense, the obstinate has familiarised the lower classes to vitality of older community traditions’.44 the work of combining in associations, making rules for their own governance, 27 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

Arthur Henderson in many ways symbolises Again we can make a distinction between the place of the Methodist tradition within how Methodism shaped his politics in terms the Labour Party. He was a hard working of political aspirations, and the tools with old union man (working for a period as which that community furnished him to a paid organiser in the Friendly Society pursue those aspirations. Methodism, for of Iron Founders).45 One biographer – Leventhal, evoked in Henderson a political Leventhal – comments on the identity response to the problems that surrounded and community with which Methodism him more akin to reforming Liberalism furnished him: ‘Wesleyanism gave him than out and out socialism (he was briefly a place in society, enriching his life with a member of the Liberal Party). As with the companionship of similarly inclined the Christian Socialists, political and young people (including Eleanor Watson, economic reform would not, for Henderson, his future wife) among whom he seems to be enough, if people were not to respond have been quickly recognised as a leader. to new freedoms in a mature way: ‘If His closest friendships were made within reformation and reform could change the the chapel, with those who shared his world, the world would have been perfect unswerving faith’.46 Leventhal also notes long ago. What we want along with our what many of his contemporaries saw as reforms is the spirit of regeneration’.48 Thus, a lack of sophistication – Henderson’s Henderson’s union activity in the Friendly reading consisted primarily of the Bible and Society of Iron Founders was characterised the sermons of Wesley and nonconformist not by the activism of the new unionism, but preachers, resulting in what were initially by deliberate moderation, and was imbued limited intellectual horizons (as he himself with a strong sense of craft dignity.49 But freely acknowledged): Henderson’s speaking experience was obtained as a popular lay preacher, and Being brought at sixteen years into his early skills in managing meetings and active church and social work and organising (his skills were as a backroom engaged in serving my apprenticeship politician, credited with building the party in the foundry, my time for exceptional machinery as treasurer and chair) were reading was limited. My Bible has ever honed in the Methodist Church before they been an immense help, not only for were deployed in the union, and in politics. its great influence but for its literary helpfulness. My best book has been The theology of early Labour close contact with, and deep interest in, leaders the spiritual, moral, social and industrial We see, then, that even the secular affairs of life.47 historiography of Beatrice Webb and E.P. Thompson is comfortable with the idea 28 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

that the early Labour leaders’ engagement hardly suggests a specifically Christian in the Christian tradition served as a socialist tradition within Labour’s broad kind of finishing school for working class church.50 politicians. Their essential political vision and activity, however, is usually assumed How can we avoid simply pointing to to have been drawn from elsewhere. It the Christianity of Labour politicians? is certainly true that none of the sources Let us offer a hypothesis, and then see we will review embarked upon a grand if the evidence lends it support: none constructive theoretical enterprise, or of the Labour leaders were systematic formed a social vision that purported in its ‘theologians’, either in the sense of fully fabric to be Christian. To what extent was understanding or appropriating a Marxist the substance of Christianity coincidental, analysis, or in developing a rounded a matter of historical contingency, which Christian social vision. Rather, they drew furnished religiously inclined socialists with organically, pragmatically and passionately a particular language with which to baptise on all available intellectual or moral what was an essentially secular political resources to build their case for social movement? Or, was the faith of Hardie, change. Henderson, Snowden, Mann, Lansbury and the rest, a determinative factor? In a comparative European perspective, Labour was a relatively late arrival on We do not have time to develop a psycho- the political scene, and was forced to biography for each case, even if it were engage from a relatively early stage in possible to make ‘windows into men’s souls’. the pragmatic business of parliamentary Such an approach, familiar from recent politics.51 Long before this, they were works, has been criticised as failing to bring engaged in various forms of practical specificity to the investigation. activism, from contesting local elections, to union activity, to campaigning on [O]ne approach is to describe any Labour industrial conditions. They did not have politician or thinker with a more than the opportunity, nor did they share a vestigial commitment to the Christian felt need, to enter into a constructive religion as a Christian socialist. This theoretical exploration of their movement, catholic interpretation allows the or require a political analysis embedded in inclusion of politicians from the Labour dialectical , in order to conduct left, right and centre. Both the socialist their business. They ‘knew’ the nature of credentials and perhaps the Christian the problem – the vulnerable position credentials of some of ‘God’s politicians’ of the working class – because most of … may be challenged, but their variety them were working class themselves (this 29 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

was rarer amongst the luminaries of the position resembled the biblical radicalism labour movement than we might imagine of the early nineteenth century Chartists or – consider Cambridge-educated Henry Primitive Methodists. Hyndman, for example). Hardie’s treatment of the Bible is Kier Hardie’s childhood experience had been surprisingly literal. The historicity of Christ of industrial poverty in the shipbuilding is assumed and the public and political districts of and then from the age relevance of Christ’s teachings left largely of ten, like Tom Mann, as a trapper in a coal undebated. What Jesus said would matter mine. Arthur Henderson began work at the to Hardie and colleagues because they age of twelve at the Robert Stephenson believed in Jesus too, and would see that locomotive works in Newcastle. what he taught, if it could be clearly exposited, was binding. Hardie and colleagues would utilise others’ constructive work to a greater or lesser It would, however, be an easy task to extent as occasion permitted. In From show that , the final goal of Serfdom to Socialism Hardie recommends Socialism, is a form of Social Economy Marx’s Capital, but also books by Robert very closely akin to the principles set Blatchford, , , forth in the Sermon on the Mount. Christ Henry George and Sidney Webb.52 recognised clearly that the possession of Henderson, for reasons of eminent private property came between a man and practicality, was even more averse to his welfare both for time and eternity.54 anything that resembled dogmatic socialist theorising. He didn’t even join the Fabian Hardie would as readily apply the Old Society until 1912 and then perhaps only Testament as the New, and also argued because his eligibility to serve as Secretary from the practice of the early Church and of the British Section of the International the teaching of the Church fathers. But the might have been questioned had he overriding force is of a simple appeal to the remained unaffiliated to any socialist ethical wisdom of the Bible, for ‘socialism, organisation.53 Similarly, although Labour like any other problem of life, is at bottom a leaders would address themselves to question of ethics and morals … to do with political problems in theological terms, relationships which should exist between a they were not doing so in the same way as man and his fellows’ and it was exactly to Maurice, Headlam, or Gore had done. They these points which Christianity spoke. made no appeal to the latter’s arguments from Anglican sacramentalism or from Thus, Hardie’s appeal to Christianity was the ‘Kingdom of Christ’. If anything, their always uncomplicated. Indeed, theology 30 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

was a problem, a distraction from the children were suffering at the hands of Christianity of Christ. In an address to the Christian employers, he says: Congregational Union of England and Wales in 1893, he caused uproar by suggesting A holocaust of every church building in that ‘Christianity today lay buried, bound Christendom tonight would be an act of up in the cerements of dead and lifeless sweet savour in the sight of Him whose theology. It awaited a decent burial, and name is supposed to be worshiped within they in the Labour movement had come their walls. If the spiritually proud and to resuscitate the Christianity of Christ, to pride-blinded professors of Christianity go back to the time when the poor should could only be made to feel and see that have the gospel preached to them, and Christ is here, ever present with us, and the gospel should be good news and joy of that they are urging on the stripes and happiness in life’.55 ‘The more a man knows binding the brow afresh with thorns and about theology,’ suggested Hardie, ‘the less making shed tears of blood in a million he is likely to know about Christianity’.56 homes. Surely the world could be made Hardie was articulating a distaste for more sweet by the establishment of His theorising and systematising faith which kingdom.57 he thought enabled the evasion of its very obvious moral demands, whether they be Hardie’s sense of genuine anger and in questions of economic policy (‘I lay it distaste for hypocrisy, grounded in a down as a broad, unchallengeable Christian Christian faith that was his own, is very principle that any system of production or clear. Hardie was not looking to marshal exchange which sanctions the exploitation arguments that would appeal to others; of the weak by the strong or the these are arguments that mattered to unscrupulous is wrong and therefore sinful’), him. That he reserves his most stinging or in his insistence that Christianity was critique for the Church and for Christianity, impossible for those who led a materially often resulted in him being called an degraded existence (‘a competitive and atheist, was indicative of the strength of profit mongering system of industry put it his conviction. This was not – contrary out of the reach of people’). to the usual interpretation – necessarily indicative of a low view of Christianity Often, Hardie seemed to engage his faith or the Church, or any particular brand of most explicitly when launching stinging heterodoxy; if anything, they were evidence attacks against what he thought to be the of his frustration that the Church obscured hypocrisy of churches or Christians. Writing the good news for the poor to which it in the of the injustices should have been pointing. His religious beliefs offered him a powerful narrative, 31 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

a grand context from which he drew basic Either we contend with the prospect that ethical imperatives for equality and justice Hardie had simply played to his audience, which enabled him to interpret the world: and knew just how to appeal to their latent a religious idealism, a moral order every bit and not so latent religiosity, or we accept as absolute as Marxism against which to that Hardie’s faith shaped how he thought, measure the shortcomings of the world.58 spoke and reacted to political issues. For And if one were to accuse Hardie of being Hardie and his like, however, changing the theologically unsophisticated, he would social system was never enough. Socialism thank you for the compliment. Theological needed Christianity, because hearts needed sophistication was, for him, avoidance of, to be changed as well.60 So close was the and not engagement with, Christianity. identification, that ‘should Christianity … disappear, there could be no Socialist Hardie, then, was an unconscious inheritor State, for Socialist doctrines are Christianity of a kind of religious-political reasoning applied to economic life’.61 prevalent amongst Chartists and other working class political movements around The thesis of a gradual transference of in the earlier nineteenth century. Although emotion from service of God to service in later life he did not attend church, of man, of a secularising of the industrial Hardie does not fit neatly into the secular working consciousness, must at least be historiography of Labour history. Certainly, described as overly simplistic. As Catterall his thinking and rhetoric did not secularise. points out, the strongest social critique Thus, addressing striking railway men in his often came from leaders of impeccable constituency in 1910, he adopted an almost faith, such as Lansbury. Christianity evangelistic turn of phrase: provided a sustaining logic to the party, casting the problems of the industrial Oh men and women, in the name of God working classes as problems of a system in whom you profess to believe in, in the grounded in unethical and immoral name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth who practices. died to save your souls, how long do you intend to submit to a system which is The Labour Church Movement defacing God’s image upon you … which If ’s faith could be described as is blurring and marring God’s handiwork, primitive biblical radicalism, then there were which is destroying the lives of men, also less vital forms of Christianity in the women and children … fight for the labour movement. The short lived Labour coming day when in your body, soul and Church Movement, which has prompted spirit you will be free to live your own some recent scholarly interest, is one lives and give glory to your Creator.59 example of a synthesis of theology, politics 32 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

and spirituality which briefly flourished but Labour Churches as transitional. Rather, rapidly foundered.62 according to Mark Bevir, Labour Churches traded in a theology of ‘immanentism’.64 The Movement was founded in 1891 by Bevir describes this mainly as a reaction to John Trevor, a Unitarian minister, who the Victorian crisis of faith, brought on by argued that the failure of existing churches the advance of science and the advent of (Anglican or Nonconformist) to support critical scholarship. Immanentists tended to the existing labour movement made it de-emphasise what others considered to be necessary for a new movement to embody distinctively Christian doctrine and theology the religious aspect of their quest for (some commentators found the Labour emancipation. It grew rapidly, but peaked Church to be ‘barely Christian’) and instead within a few years and quickly fell back, to favoured an emphasis on the presence the point that it had ceased to exist entirely of the divine in the world – sometimes by the outbreak of the First World War. in the person of Jesus, sometimes in a Hardie was a frequent speaker, along with vaguer universal spirit. Bevir observes that Snowden, Katherine Glaiser and a series philosophical idealists such as T.H. Green of other leading Christian figures in the and D.G. Ritchie drew on Hegelianism movement. Few of these were members, and and Darwinism to suggest that human few mentioned it in their autobiographies. affairs embody just such a universal spirit, For Henry Pelling, this was indicative of the conceived as a progressive force.65 In its marginality of the movement. Statistics vary Christian incarnations, immanentism thus too widely to be trustworthy, but there were undermined spiritual (i.e., non-material) perhaps around 50 churches in 1895, some experience focused on the destination with substantial membership (between of the eternal soul, and by contrast 300–500 people).63 emphasised the issues of the secular public world. Like Hardie’s Christianity, and the For some, like Pelling, the Labour Church theology of Maurice, Labour Churches existed as an intermediary stage on the existed partly because of a need to insist on journey from a pre-political religious the public nature of Christianity. Bevir notes socialism to a fully developed secular how D.B. Foster – in a way reminiscent of political movement. Others, however, Hardie’s frustration with theology as against have sought to suggest that it did not practical Christianity – argued that the follow the narrative of secularisation, and Labour Churches attracted those frustrated that only a strong prior judgement that by the other-worldliness of existing a mature socialism must be secular could churches. lead historians to reinterpret the religious self-understanding of those involved in the 33 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

Immanentism, however, was something of present in the Labour Church. He found a de-mythologized Christianity, supplanting ‘many loud and persistent demands for the redemptive activity of God and the economic change but little interest into Spirit in the Church with the inevitable the development of the human soul.’67 The progression towards universal brotherhood. key objective was not to make disciples of Theologically speaking, humanity was an Christ, but to make socialists – men and expression of the progressive unfolding women fully cognisant of the brotherhood of the divine will. Socialism as universal of humanity – and then to allow politics to fellowship was an inevitable result of take care of itself. Others would reminisce the unfolding progressive story. What is in later years that it was a very similar distinctive about the development of this experience to that of attending a meeting theology in the context of the Labour of a branch of the ILP. Bevir even speculates Church movement, as opposed to F.D. that at least some Labour Churches were Maurice’s insistence on the present reality of founded in order to circumvent laws the Kingdom, was that it implicitly identified prohibiting political meetings on Sundays. the labour movement as the means through The Dundee Labour Church, for instance, which the unfolding purposes of God would, was formed not only to keep the religious almost inevitably, be realised. element in the cause robust, but also to allow lectures to obtain a hearing on The symbiotically close relationship between Sundays. the ILP and the Labour Churches, along with this loss (or disavowal) of distinctive Rejecting Pelling’s interpretation which Christian belief and practice, resulted in attributes the failure and decline of internal struggles in the Labour Church over the Labour Churches to the increasing forms of ‘worship’ (even down to controversy secularisation in the wider movement, around the use of the word ‘God’). Most Bevir argues instead that immanentism traditional Christian forms of worship were provided ‘a fairly stable solution to the ignored or abandoned, the services used in [Victorian] crisis of faith’, and recounts how the main part for platforming key Labour many Labour Church leaders continued to leaders.66 John Trevor, the movement’s pursue activities that seemed driven by founder, resigned in 1898 because of the that approach.68 In other words, they did Churches’ virtually synonymy with the ILP, not simply secularise. Rather, he suggests, particularly under the leadership of Fred immanentism was of little use as a political Brocklehurst. doctrine.

In 1902 one A.B. Forster conducted an … the problem is that immanentists inquest into just how much ‘religion’ was usually have to appeal to a wider 34 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

audience if they are to acquire the socialisms. The Labour Church Movement support necessary for effective political gave no account of classical Christian action, but to make such an appeal, they doctrines, one way or another: it de- have to play down their religious faith. emphasised soteriology – the need for If they remain true to their faith, there a redemptive act from God – because it remains little effective political activity underplayed sinfulness on an individual or they can undertake, but if they try to structural level. Its Christology was weak, formulate an effective political stance, framing Jesus as a proto-socialist, rather they undermine their religious identity … than as a unique and specific occasion this conflict leads to sterility and of God’s immanence, from which ethical decline …69 and political reflection could proceed. Its ecclesiology diminished the Church From a theological perspective, we might to a voluntary association of the socially add to Bevir’s analysis that, as a political concerned. Its pneumatology collapsed theology, immanentism simply did not do the Spirit into the spirit of brotherhood in the work of relating traditional Christian humanity. Its eschatology was realised in beliefs or practices to social questions. the progressive achievements of the labour It lacked a binding account of what the movement, brought about by the making of Labour Church, or what a Christianity many socialists. sympathetic to Labour issues, was and meant, as distinct from the wider labour In fact, by simply equating the immanence movement. We have already noted how the of God with the human processes of concrete practices of Labour Churches were politics – his presence within the unfolding similar in nature to those of an average ILP story of the world and in the progressive branch meeting – a socialist hymn or song, achievements of the Labour movement – a reading from a religious book (not usually Labour Churches made God redundant. the Bible), and an address by a prominent Bevir is right to suggest that they were speaker from the ILP. not simply a point on a scale of conversion to secularism – they were profoundly One can indeed question whether the theological. But they were, theologically Labour Church as a whole was a genuinely speaking, a parody of orthodox Christianity. Christian movement in the labour tradition. In their ideas and practices, they offered This is not to suggest, alongside earlier nothing to the labour movement that it did interpreters, that it was a stage in the not already have, except a brief diversion secularisation of labour politics – that for the theologically discontented (Trevor’s it was un-theological – but to locate it rationale for leaving his Unitarian church within pseudo-religious or mystical ethical was that he felt ‘unable to breath’ in 35 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

chapel), a brief flurry of charitable and (eds.), The Industrial Revolution and British Society, Cambridge University Press, 1993, 238. educative activity, and a platform for the 2 national leadership of the ILP. For a full account, see Yeo, E, ‘Christianity and the Chartist Struggle,’ Past & Present, 9.1, 1981, 109–139.

3 The Labour Church is perhaps an example Hilton’s use of the term ‘evangelical’ is a technical one, and specifically relates to those who held a of the awkward position of faith-based certain position vis-à-vis political economy. It should engagement with political parties, not be equated with the word in contemporary usage, succeeding only in baptising a particular though some ‘evangelicals’ are certainly admired by modern evangelicals. brand of politics, and providing neither a 4 critical framework nor sufficient grounds Walsh, C. ‘The Incarnation and the Christian Socialist Conscience,’ Journal of British Studies 34, 1995, 352. for political activity, failing on both counts. 5 Hardie, for all his anticlericalism, provides Hilton, B. ‘The role of Providence in evangelical social thought,’ in Beales, D. and Best, G. (eds.), a striking counter example. Consciously or History, Society and the Churches: Essays in Honour of unconsciously, he drew on resources that Owen Chadwick, Cambridge University Press, 2005, were more or less proximate to orthodox 220. Christianity, knowing – perhaps innately – 6 Walsh, C. ‘Incarnation and the Christian Socialist that it is in orthodox Christianity that the Conscience’, 354. Gospel holds its social power. There would 7 The Charter demanded a vote for every man above be no more powerful motivating force than twenty one years of age, the introduction of a secret ballot, no property qualifications for Members of to take the witness of Scripture, and the Parliament, payment of Members of Parliament, equal Jesus of the Bible, seriously and to accept sized constituencies, and annual Parliaments. as true and binding his announcement of 8 Charles Fourier (7 April 1772–10 October 1837) was freedom for the prisoner, recovery of sight a French utopian socialist who inspired the founding for the blind, release for the oppressed.70 of a cooperative community called La Reunion near present-day Dallas, Texas as well as several other communities within the United States of America, Trevor and his colleagues were convinced such as the North American Phalanx in New Jersey that they were shaking away the husks and Community Place and five others in New York State. of religion, retaining the kernel of true faith, but in fact they were engaged in 9 See Maurice, F.D. ‘Reasons for Cooperation’, in Atherton, J. (ed.), Social Christianity: A Reader, SPCK, an evisceration of social Christianity. It is 1994, 56–57. little surprise that it was a short-lived and 10 Maurice, F.D. ‘Dialogue Between Somebody (a ineffective engagement. Person of Respectability) and Nobody (the Writer)’, Tracts on Christian Socialism 1, 1850, 1. Marx would Notes have decried this, had he known about it: ‘Nothing is easier than to give Christian Asceticism a Socialist tinge’. 1 Stevenson, J. ‘Social aspects of the Industrial Revolution,’ in Patrick O’Brien and Roland Quinault, 11 Atherton, J. Social Christianity, 53.

36 Building Jersualem? Nineteenth century engagements

12 Quoted in Morris, J. To Build Christ’s Kingdom: F.D. 32 Pelling, H. Origins of the Labour Party, Oxford Maurice and His Writings, Canterbury Press, 2007, 45. University Press, 1965, 125. 13 Maurice, F.D. ‘Dialogue Between Somebody’, 528. 33 Methodist Times, 20 October, 1892, quoted in Pelling, H. Origins of the Labour Party, 130. 14 Morris, J. To Build Christ’s Kingdom, 51. 34 Bevir, M. ‘The Labour Church Movement, 1891– 15 See, for instance, Maurice, F.D. ‘Christianity Against 1902’, Journal of British Studies 38, 1999, 222. Mammon’, in Atherton, J. Social Christianity, 73. 35 Henderson, A. ‘British Labour and Religion’, in Davis, 16 Maurice, F.D. The Kingdom of Christ, Gilbert and J. (ed.), Labor Speaks for Itself on Religion, New York, Rivington, 1842, 528–529. 1929, 144–5. 17 Allen, P. ‘F.D. Maurice and J. M. Ludlow: A 36 Catterall, P. ‘Morality and Politics: The Free Reassessment of the Leaders of Christian Socialism,’ Churches and the Labour Party between the Wars’, Victorian Studies, 11.4, 1968, 473. Historical Journal, 36.3, 1993, 668–9. 18 Raven, C.E. Christian Socialism, 1848–1854, Taylor 37 Pelling, H. Origins of the Labour Party, 143. & Francis, 1968, 89. 38 Webb, B. My Apprenticeship, quoted in Pelling, H. 19 Norman, E.R. The Victorian Christian Socialists, Origins of the Labour Party, 144. Cambridge University Press, 2002, 11. 39 Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working 20 Raven, C.E. Christian Socialism, 307. Class, 42. 21 wmcollege.ac.uk/ 40 Ibid., p. 380. 22 Norman, E.R. The Victorian Christian Socialists, 2. 41 Catterall, P. ‘The Distinctiveness of British 23 Ludlow, J.M. and Jones, L. of the Working Socialism?’ 132. Class, 1867, 304. 42 Young, G.M. Victorian England: Portrait of an Age, 24 Ludlow, J.M. ‘Government’ in Maurice, F.D. and 1936, 2nd ed., London 1966, 170. Ludlow, J.M. (eds.), Politics for the People, J.W. Parker, 43 Greenleaf, W.H. The British Political Tradition 1848, 124. Volume Two: The Ideological Heritage, Routledge, 25 Adelman, P. The Rise of the Labour Party 1880– 1983, 353. 1945, Longman, 1996, 20. 44 Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working 26 Adelman, P. The Rise of the Labour Party 1880– Class, 380. Graham Maddox, in his Religion and 1945, 23. the Rise of Democracy, Routledge, 1996, broadens this argument to encompass the importance of 27 Without pretending that all of these were people Christianity per se in the development of a democratic of faith, these would include Jim Callaghan, Harold consciousness. Wilson, , Anthony Crosland. 45 The distinction between ‘new’ and ‘old’ unionism is 28 Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working between older craft unions, which organised workers Class, Penguin, 1991, 45. in established trades along hierarchical models, 29 Ibid., 45. and general industrial unions which organised on a membership basis, often including unskilled, manual 30 Ibid., 392 or irregular labourers. These emerged in the 1880s, and were a significant source of support for the ILP. 31 Ibid., 43. ‘Old’ Unionism tended to be more conservative, and was more firmly attached to the Liberal Party.

37 Building Jerusalem?

46 Leventhal, F.M. Arthur Henderson, Manchester 56 Ibid., 87. University Press, 1989, 3. 57 Ibid., 98. 47 Ibid., 3. 58 Catterall, P. ‘The Distinctiveness of British 48 Dale, G. God’s Politicians, HarperCollins, 2000, 59. Socialism?’, 151. 49 Leventhal, F.M. Arthur Henderson, 5. 59 Holman, P. ‘The Distinctiveness of British Socialism?’, 167. 50 Leach, ‘Christian Socialism, 6. Robert Leach refers specifically to Dale, G.God’s Politicians, HarperCollins, 60 Catterall, P. ‘The Distinctiveness of British 2000. Other works might include, Wilkinson, A. Socialism?’, 151. Christian Socialism: Scott Holland to Tony Blair, 61 J.R. Clynes, quoted in Catterall, P. ‘Morality and SCM, 1998 or, for an individual portrait, Holman, Politics’, 152. B. Kier Hardie: Labour’s Greatest Hero, Lion, 2010. Against this, the Christian commitments, vestigial 62 See Turner, J. ‘Labour’s Lost Soul? Recovering the or otherwise, of the early Labour leaders are hardly Labour Church’, in Worley, M. ed., The Foundations of irrelevant, and are at least part of the social and the British Labour Party, Ashgate, 2009; and Bevir, M. cultural milieu from which individuals emerged and in ‘The Labour Church Movement, 1891–1902’, Journal which the movement was forged. Dale, for instance, of British Studies 38, 1999, 217–245. simply attempts to provide a basic narrative covering 63 one hundred years of the Labour Party’s life, and Turner, J. ‘Labour’s Lost Soul? 156. point to occasions and ways in which it has come 64 Bevir, M. ‘The Labour Church Movement, 1891– into contact with the Christian tradition. For the 1902’, Journal of British Studies 38, 1999, 217–245. comprehensive, Dale trades the critical, but in so doing he provides a useful overview. 65 Bevir, M. ‘The Labour Church Movement, 1891– 1902’, 7. 51 Caterall, P. ‘The Distinctiveness of British Socialism?’ 138. 66 Bevir records that the Labour Church Hymn Book contained few traditional hymns, being composed 52 Holman, B. Kier Hardie, 133. mainly of socialist songs written by writers such as 53 Leventhal, F.M. Arthur Henderson, 29. Henderson Carpenter and Morris and poems by Emerson and was, however, responsible with Sidney Webb for the Charles Kingsley. Readings also came from these drafting and inclusion of Clause IV of the Labour writers, with Trevor complaining that ‘the Bible is so Party constitution. Leventhal presents this as a frightfully and falsely conventionalised… it is difficult moderate formulation, through which Henderson to make a Bible reading a real and helpful thing to a intended neither state capitalism nor state socialism, Labour Church audience’. but industrial democracy – expanded nationalisation 67 Quoted in Turner, J. ‘Labour’s Lost Soul? 167. of railways, shipping, mines , and the purchase and distribution of raw materials. The primary objective, 68 John Trevor, interestingly, became active in the however, was political: maintaining the ongoing basically humanist South Place Ethical Society. support of both the trade unions and the socialist 69 Bevir, M. ‘The Labour Church Movement, 1891– militants (76–77). 1902’. 54 Hardie, J.K. , G. Allen, From Serfdom to Socialism 70 Luke 4.18b–19 1907. 55 Holman, B. Kier Hardie, Lion Hudson, 2010, 85.

38 Building Jerusalem?

Twentieth century engagements

Themes in the work of R.H. Tawney On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, The Times wrote that ‘no man alive has put more people in his spiritual and intellectual debt than Richard Henry Tawney’.1 But if he ever did have a place in the pantheon of the great thinkers of the British left then, in the five decades since his death, that place has come into question.

The political historian William Greenleaf that everything that contributed to the found his writing to have an air of greatness and success of their country ‘meanness’ about it.2 Economist David derived from a sinful selfishness and Martin suggests that Tawney’s relative money-grubbing wickedness’, or that he eclipse was due to the growing perception ‘helped to make a whole generation believe of him, in the years immediately that the achievement of equality in the following his death, as a genteel moralist, distribution of social goods was impossible evolutionary socialist and specialist in within an acquisitive society’.4 In 1964, the the academic backwater of the history (at that time Marxist) philosopher Alasdair of the fifteenth century.3 As a political MacIntyre suggested that Tawney’s social thinker, many have judged his work to critique was riddled with ‘cliché-ridden be derivative. In the field of economic high mindedness’ and ‘banal earnestness’.5 history the Tawney tradition is said to be None of this suggests that Tawney’s work in decline, and even in adult education a might usefully be revived or reclaimed for case has been made for the contemporary reflection on contemporary social, economic irrelevance of the ‘Tawney legend’. Then or political issues. there are those who have not been content to suggest irrelevance, and who argue This may come as a surprise to many, since that his influence has been downright politicians of many stripes have been kinder, pernicious. Neville Johnson has suggested and have indeed been eager to suggest that: ‘At least one generation, and that a the Tawney heritage as their own. He has crucial one, was given grounds for believing been claimed variously by the founding

39 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

members of the Social Democratic Party (its on a mixture of scholarship and social Tawney Society think-tank lasted until the concern, but it clearly contained party merged with the Liberals in 1988), elements capable of producing a Michael Foot (in angry response to the SDP), powerful and durable response in many the Kinnock-Hattersley axis and, of course, of those who breathed it in … There was Tony Blair. Wright recalls how Tawney also an emphasis on social duties and was a ubiquitous presence in the Labour responsibilities, which could take many leadership elections of 1983, prompting The forms but which was an explicit part of Guardian to nominate Tawney – Tawney as the Balliol ethos … [Tawney] left Oxford the ideal double ticket. Of course, in some inspired by the severe injunction of Caird, cases the Tawney move is more symbolic the Master of Balliol, that ‘when we than actual, the invocation of his work more had done with Oxford studies, some of a statement about what the speaker prefers us should go to Poplar to discover why not to be, rather than a thoroughgoing with so much wealth, there was so much engagement with any given aspect of poverty in London’.6 his work. Yet the fact that his name has become a kind of sobriquet for all kinds Tawney, bedevilled by slow handwriting and of socialism is indicative of his emotional an ‘insufficiently narrowed mind’, left Balliol influence over the Labour movement and a with only a second in ‘Greats’, prompting testament to its often unarticulated need his father to ask how he proposed to wipe for a foundational moral – indeed spiritual out the disgrace and Caird to comment – critique. that the examiners had failed to detect the chaos of a great mind. In later life, Tawney Tawney’s background was fairly prosperous. was indifferent to this academic failure. For He attended Rugby school, though later him, his most formative years were those became a strong critic of educational spent in the East End immediately after his systems which divide social classes. graduation, and in Workers’ Educational Famously, he was a contemporary and Association classes in Rochdale, Longton, friend of William Temple, the most Littleborough and Wrexham. Here the influential Archbishop of the twentieth ‘friendly smiting of weavers, potters, miners, century and a leading social reformer. In and engineers taught [him] much about the 1899, he went to Balliol College Oxford, of problems of political and economic science which Tony Wright writes: which can not easily be learnt from books’.7

It is difficult at this range to get inside In 1909 he was asked by the Oxford the atmosphere of turn-of-the-century University Tutorial Classes Committee, Balliol, with its particular emphasis which by then was Tawney’s employer, to 40 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

prepare a book on the industrial history economic problems distinguishes Tawney’s of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth prescriptions in important ways from some centuries. Tawney’s career as an economic of his contemporaries in the Labour Party, historian began in earnest, and the not least his friends Sidney and Beatrice book was published in 1912 under the Webb. underwhelming title of The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century. Wright This basic orientation never changed, calls it ‘a masterpiece, a triumphant although Greenleaf suggests that his combination of scrupulous scholarship and experience in the Great War (he had served moral commitment’. Dedicated to William as a ‘gentleman ranker’, and was injured on Temple and Albert Mansbridge of the the first day of the Battle of the Somme) Workers’ Educational Association, it focused forced him to reflect on what practical on the social changes wrought by large social reforms might be achieved through scale land enclosures. Yet the book was not the activity of the state. The war had a dry historical chronicle, but emphasised occasioned social and intellectual tumult, the role of contending conceptions of the and also disenchantment with existing proper conduct of economic and social life. social systems and an expectation that ‘Economic policies are not to be explained things might change. He spoke of a ‘new in terms of economics alone’, he insisted; moral and intellectual atmosphere’, brought for when ‘an old and strong society is about in ‘the forcing-house of war’.9 It was challenged by a new phenomenon, its in the light of his tactical acceptance of response is torn from a living body of parliamentary socialism that he became assumptions as to the right conduct of increasingly involved in the practicalities human affairs, which feels that more than of public life. He was a member of the material interests are menaced, and which Sankey Commission on industrial relations, braces itself anxiously against the shock’.8 and reputedly deeply involved in the drafting of the 1918 Education Act and This proposition that the rules of the the interwar Hadow Reports on education. economic game are intimately and He also participated in several church indivisibly bound up with ethical and commissions on public life. His influence, moral considerations was foundational along with William Temple’s, is said to in Tawney’s work. The sickness of the have been formative on the Archbishop’s acquisitive society was a moral sickness, 5th Committee, Christianity and Industrial the appropriate prescription and treatment Problems. therefore depended at least in part on shaping the ethical landscape. This basic Tawney, therefore, was more grounded in orientation towards the ethical dimension of the life of the Church than any Christian 41 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

Socialist since F.D. Maurice. The Church consisting of four distinct aspects: first, had an ongoing social role; indeed, the his critique of the ‘acquisitive society’; assumption that religion was irrelevant second, his alternative of the ‘functional to social and economic questions was a society’; third, his proposed method of problem near the root of society’s ills. It transformation, and; fourth, his emphasis on was Christian thinking that would impose the importance of education.12 limits on the ruthless egoism that had come to characterise the capitalist economy. In The Acquisitive Society Tawney argues He consciously drew on and expounded that the secularisation of economics a broad tradition of Christian economic (not least because of changes in the thinking, speaking of ‘the formidable edifice seventeenth century theological landscape) of speculation, precept and law’ developed had resulted in a situation where human by anti-capitalist religious theorists of affairs were conducted ‘in the light of no the Middle Ages and the ‘agreeably other end than the temporary appetites intemperate fulminations’ of Reformation of individuals’ and ‘the unreasoning and thinkers against usury, land-grabbing and morbid pursuit of pecuniary gain’. This was extortionate prices. This body of reflection a matter of convenience and desire, as was ‘so extensive, and sometimes so learned opposed to the (Christian) assertion, that and acute’ that it could not be easily ‘all men are children of God … the rights of dismissed: ‘whatever its aberrations and all men were equal’.13 The ‘whole tendency lacunae, it forms a characteristic chapter in and interest and preoccupation [of such religious and political thought’.10 a society] is to promote the acquisition of wealth’. This draws deeply on human Thus, as Tony Wright suggests, Tawney’s sinfulness – a subject upon which Tawney project across his major areas of endeavour, reflects elsewhere – which allows the strong whether the academic practice of history, ‘unfettered exercise’ of power, and the adult education, social criticism or the weak the ‘hope that they too will one day practice of political theory, was to draw his be strong’.14 The acquisitive society ‘assures work together within a unified framework of men that there are no ends other than moral, theological, economic and political their ends, no law other than their desires, understanding. Such a framework could not no limit other than that which they think only make sense of the society around him desirable’.15 The result is the degradation of but also indicate a way (he hoped) in which those who labour, a perversion of attitudes that society could find a durable solution that fixates on wealth, the waste and to the industrial and social problems misapplication of productive power in the increasingly tearing it apart.11 Greenleaf multiplication of luxuries, the divorce of applies to Tawney’s work an architecture reward from service, industrial warfare and 42 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

an unchristian inequality. Vested interests the servant of society, working within would prevent the reorganisation of society clearly defined limits, and accountable to on more just and rational lines.16 public authority.19 As we shall see, Tawney was profoundly interested in freedom In its place, Tawney aspired to create a and democracy, but he was not a liberal. ‘functional society’.17 Or, more properly, Freedom, as a social good, was highly he understood all societies as functional desirable but neither primary nor unlimited. (i.e., orientated towards a particular end), It could only be predicated on ‘the common but some ends were admirable, others good’ – a phrase Tawney never used, but less so. The function of a capitalist system one that seems to capture his meaning well. is to open opportunities to individuals to obtain ends which they perceive to A functional society, moreover, would be advantageous to themselves, and so need to see a substantial reorganisation become only ‘acquisitive’. of industry. If the unrestricted power and influence of the capitalist was brought to If asked the end or criterion of social an end, then labour too would need to take organisation, they would give an answer responsibility for the carrying out of industry reminiscent of the formula the greatest in a functional way. Trade unions would happiness of the greatest number. But change from being defensive agencies – to say that the end of social institutions consumed with resisting the downward is happiness, is to say that they have thrust of capitalism on workers’ standard of no common end at all. For happiness is living – into being holders of power, able to individual, and to make happiness the advise, initiate and enforce upon their own object of society is to resolve society members the obligations of their craft. itself into the ambitions of numberless individuals, each directed towards the The functional society would be brought attainment of some personal purpose.18 about primarily by a change in economic psychology. This sat squarely on Tawney’s Rather, Tawney is looking for a society insistence that most industrial, economic where the exercise of economic power is and social problems were, at their root, contingent on social obligation. In such human and moral. He was not indifferent, a society, individual rights and property however, to institutional questions. On could not be seen as absolute, but the one hand, he was suspicious of Fabian conditional only on their ordering and collectivism, on the basis that public use against a greater principle or social ownership would not resolve the deep- object. Economic power would thus cease seated problem: ‘supposing unearned to be an irresponsible tyrant, and become incomes, rents, etc. are pooled … will the 43 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

world, with its present philosophy, do equality had been achieved, but it should anything but gobble them up and look be matched with similar endeavour in the up with an impatient grunt for more’.20 industrial environment, and in the social Considering his dim view of human system. If in the industrial environment the sinfulness and his long membership answer was to democratise, in the social of and involvement with the Fabians, environment a socialist party should, he Tawney was surprisingly resistant to the suggested, seek to abolish class disparities kind of bureaucratic system proposed of wealth, opportunity, social provision, by the Webbs. He felt that they lacked and economic power. It is in this context a comprehensive vision of socially just, that we should see his lifelong activity in ethical society, and at best their proposals the arena of education, where class was would have the effect of ‘tidying the room’, such a determining feature of the quality of but ‘opening no windows in the soul’, and provision. In this, he foresaw a substantial would be an instance of making a ‘surgical expansion of state activity: nursery schools experiment on a man who is dying of in all areas, school medical services, starvation or who is poisoned by foul air’. adequate meals, and primary and secondary On the contrary, however fallen human level education. beings were, Tawney could not countenance a negation of their essential dignity under The social aspirations, which have an all-powerful state. ‘However the socialist created the industrial and political ideal may be expressed, few things could labour movements, have in fact had be more remote from it than a herd of tame as their counterpart the growth of an animals with wise rulers in command.’21 educational idealism which regards the widest possible extension of educational Tawney, along with the Guild Socialists and facilities as the indispensible condition thinkers like Harold Laski, did not – first of realising the type of social order which and foremost – advocate extensive public it is the purpose of those movements to ownership or welfarism, but the extension bring into existence.23 of democracy into areas of life that had hitherto escaped its influence.22 The *** challenge was to change the psychology of different vocations, in a way that had Why is it, then, that later assessments of been possible with medicine or teaching, Tawney have been so unkind? Why is he and direct it towards the public good, thought of as, at best, a quaint English while giving the worker the opportunity moralist? Why is his work is often referred of participation and control. In political to, but so rarely exposited? His critique of society, a measure of democracy and the acquisitive society could hardly be more 44 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

prescient for our own times, so much so that a Christian tradition, and his complaint it is hard to understand why the analysis against the ‘acquisitive society’ was could have been made so persuasively and that it was unchristian, indeed anti- celebrated so widely within the Labour Christian. The kind of economic life that movement and beyond, yet have had so it embodied had come about precisely little traction over the course of time. His because of the evisceration of Christian voice became a minority one in the era of concepts from the public square. What the ‘Keynes-plus-Beveridge-state’24 and his is crucial to the case that Tawney makes latter day appropriation at the early stages in The Acquisitive Society is not just that of New Labour now seems highly ironic. As capitalism is critiqued from an economic Ruskin once said, ‘They read my words, say perspective but that renewed economic and that they are pretty, and then go on their political practices are held out as ethical way’.25 alternatives. As Wright puts it, socialism was a choice available to all. If society is to be It seems that Tawney understood the anything other than a mechanism, a kind of nature of the challenge. Again, for him repository of labour, capital and consumers, achieving political change was not simply a then it would have to be ‘a community of matter of the state pulling the right levers: wills capable of being inspired by devotion resources had to be found for moral and to common ends’.27 And that common end intellectual reform. Unfortunately for his was shaped by a foundational ethic: project, the moral capital which was the common property of all Christian nations The essence of all morality is this: to was diminished in the 1960s. Towards believe that every human being is of the end of his life, after several periods of infinite importance, and therefore that Labour government, he warned that the no consideration of expediency can future could consist of ‘merely a more widely justify the oppression of one by another. disseminated cult of betting-coupons, But to believe that it is necessary to comforts and careers’. This might be some believe in God. To estimate men simply gain, ‘but it would hardly be worth the by their place in the social order is to century of sweat which, together with some sanction the sacrifice of man to that tears, has been needed to produce it’.26 order. It is only when we realise that each individual soul is related to a power Tawney’s thinking was deeply and above other men, that we are able to undeniably Christian, indeed, more regard each as an end in itself … The seriously and deeply so than many religious social order is judged and condemned by contributions we have reviewed. His case a power transcending it.28 was self-consciously made from within 45 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

It is not easy to deduce Tawney’s theological vision of equality and socialism, rooted in views from his published works. Perhaps an unashamedly biblical anthropology – for even in the 1920s he was aware that, to ‘by affirming that all men are the children paraphrase Clement Atlee, there would be of God, it insists that the rights of all men plenty of co-belligerents who would accept are equal’ and, ‘by affirming that men are Christian ethics so long as they did not men and nothing more, it is a warning that come packaged with any ‘mumbo-jumbo’. those rights are conditional and derivative Tawney wrote in his Commonplace Book – a commission of service, not a property’. in language full of ‘mumbo–jumbo’; of a Under such an understanding of social ‘consciousness of contact’, and a sense institutions, economic activity and industrial of the closeness of God – a ‘fact of direct organisation cannot be seen as neutral or experience infinitely more immediate than functional – ‘they are judged, not merely reflection on an absent but existing person, by their convenience, but by the standards and analogous to the consciousness of the of right and wrong. They become stages in presence of a person in the same room the progress of mankind to perfection, and as oneself’ – and a consciousness of the derive a certain sacramental significance deep fallenness of human nature. Yet his from the spiritual end to which, if only membership of and involvement with the as a kind of squalid scaffolding, they are Fabian Society, the fact that according ultimately related’.29 to Beatrice Webb he was ‘a saint’, his engagement with practical politics and real Much of Tawney’s analysis would sit policy, indicate that he managed to carry awkwardly with contemporary members his theology in a way which did not prevent of the Labour Party, which has pursued him from working with others. redistribution without seeking psychological and moral changes, and latterly adopted Nevertheless, his theology was the market as the driver of improvement determinative of his politics. As Greenleaf in public services and the paymaster of notes, whatever agreement there might be the welfare state. Tawney might ask, have on particular proposals for change, Tawney we not consumed, and looked up with an could never be at one with the Fabians or impatient grunt for more? the Marxists, both of whom proposed to create social change chiefly through the The Roman Catholic tradition agency of a powerful, ‘scientific’ state. Thus far, our discussion of the Christian Tawney’s vision was of human liberty and contribution to the Labour Party has dignity in the context of accountability focussed on either Anglicanism (F.D. to a conception of the good. This can be Maurcie, Tawney) or Nonconformity traced to Tawney’s essentially Christian (Methodism, Hardie, the Labour Churches). 46 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

It would be wrong to proceed any further Glasgow under the auspices of the Catholic without giving some account of the Truth Society, which sought to distinguish important role of Roman Catholicism. between the innocuous socialism of the Labour MPs elected in 1906 and the anti- This is a task of a different kind. The Christian socialism of Robert Blatchford, Catholic Church stands alone in having Wheatley wrote to the Glasgow Herald, a central and authoritative corpus of quoting widely from Catholic literature and political and social teaching that addresses concluding: exactly the same questions as socialism, and indeed the legitimacy of socialism as The Catholic Church has always leaned against Roman Catholic social teaching. In more to socialism or collectivism and response to the industrial unrest of the late equality, than to individualism and nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, inequality. It has always been the it offered (and offers) both succour to church of the poor and all the historical labour and a clear repudiation of ‘socialism’, attacks on it have emanated from understood as the ‘striving to do away with the rich. Its Divine Founder on every private property’, and the contention that occasion condemned the accumulation ‘individual possessions should become the of wealth.32 common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies’.30 Catholics could thus sustain a commitment Thus, Roman Catholics have always been in to the Church, in spite of its ambivalence tension with the most central commitments to socialism, by virtue of its consistent of the historical left, common ownership of endorsement of the legitimate claims of the means of production administered by the working-class. The predominantly the state (as expressed, albeit moderately, working-class League of the Cross in by the original Clause IV). Indeed, when September 1906 heard their Archbishop, Clause IV was introduced into the Labour Charles Maguire, welcome the advent of Party constitution, one Manchester party the working class as a political force in member, John Burns, attempted to establish its own right, while a notable Franciscan, a – the Centre Labour Party Father David, felt able to tell a questioner – which excluded Clause IV. It was not at one of his lectures that since the Church unsuccessful in gaining support. had not, at that stage, condemned the ILP, Catholics were free in conscience to join Yet some Catholics, notably , it.33 ‘Our socialism’, wrote Wheatley, ‘is not were very clear about the shared interests confiscation or robbery nor the destruction of Catholicism and socialism.31 In response of family life, nor anything like what you to a lecture given at the Athenaeum Hall in have heard our opponents describe it. It 47 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

differs from the Socialism condemned by by a Catholic mob. But underneath the the Pope in that it retains the right to own tension lay a reality that saw Catholic private property. It is simply a scheme to Church rhetoric soften over time: while abolish poverty’.34 Catholic engagement theoretically and theologically the Catholic in the ILP and the Labour Party was thus hierarchy found aspects of Labour doctrine fashioned on the template provided by the objectionable, it was also equally aware that seminal papal encyclical on capital, labour there were more extreme options available and industrialisation, Rerum Novarum of for (often already radical) Catholic workers. 1891. While explicit in its condemnation If parishioners were supporting a dubious of socialism as a political doctrine, Labour Party, then at least they were not this had endorsed many aspects of the indulging in out and out communism. While labour movement’s social and political Catholics gained positive permission to vote programme, particularly affirming some for and join the Party in the 1920s, their of the political devices by which socialism role would always be seen in some senses as was to be approached (a living wage, rights one of permeation and ideological damage of association). In spite of the tension, limitation, keeping the party on the straight Catholics had room for manoeuvre. and narrow.37

In 1906 Wheatley founded the Catholic Wheatley wound up the Catholic Socialist Socialist Society with the intent of ensuring Society in 1919. Dale suggests that ‘the that ‘Socialism could be preached in an reason for its existence had largely been atmosphere free from any irreligious taint’. achieved’.38 But there was no shortage of One biographer, Ian Wood, suggests other Catholic ‘ginger groups’. The Catholic that the actual membership was always Social Guild was launched, according small, but its ideas attracted a broad to Henry Sommerville, to promote the audience, with the CSS’s first pamphlet, maintenance and defence of the Christian Economic Discontent by Father Hagerty, family, the establishment of a living wage, selling 50,000 copies.35 After starting worker partnership in industry and the in Wheatley’s Glasgow, it founded three wider diffusion of property. Among its other chapters in , two in England activities was the development of skills and one in Belfast. The society was amongst Catholic workers – study groups stillborn, however, when a local bishop with books, pamphlets and reading lists. A condemned it in a pastoral letter, with considerable number of attendees ended up attendance dwindling as a result.36 as executive members of their trade union and Labour Party branches.39 The CSG, The antagonism was very real, and on one therefore, functioned in a way not unlike the occasion Wheatley’s home was visited 48 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

Methodist chapels, furnishing its members came onto the agenda which disrupted not just with ideas but with capabilities. the relationship between Catholics and Labour, each revisiting the inherent tension Dale’s suggestion points to the way in between the Labour Party and Catholicism, which ‘the Catholic vote’ has historically and giving it added electoral bite. During been of much more interest to the Labour the 1929 General Election campaign, for Party than that of other denominations. instance, the Catholic Church had organised Although Nonconformity provided Labour intensive lobbying of prospective MPs with personnel, it never aligned as a whole from all parties, eager to secure increased in terms of votes. The divided political funding for Catholic schools while retaining allegiances of Nonconformity became the right to appoint teachers and supervise commonplace in the 1920s, and ‘there is religious teaching. Significant numbers of some circumstantial evidence to suggest MPs in Catholic areas supported Catholic that Liberalism remained the dominant attempts to change and ultimately wreck political creed of Nonconformity for some Trevelyan’s 1931 Education Bill, prompting time’ after that.40 Catholicism, in contrast, his resignation.42 Neil Riddell suggests that, was low-hanging fruit for the Labour in spite of the Catholic victory, unease Party. Working Catholics were, in terms about the direction of the Party amongst of , natural Labour supporters, Catholic voters contributed both to the concentrated in urban wards and more Party’s loss of the 1931 Sunderland by- inclined to vote in predictable ways on election and the selection of a Catholic a series of issues (birth control, Catholic candidate Ashton-under-Lyne although, education, etc., as well as on economic again, Labour lost the seat.43 issues). Catterall rehearses some of the more obvious efforts to court Catholic opinion.41 Nor was this the only issue which would In Bolton, Catholics were selected as strain the association between the Catholic running mates of Albert Law, a Wesleyan lay Church and Labour: from the 1920s parts of preacher, in this two member constituency the Labour Party began to advocate birth in 1929, 1931 and 1935. In Bradford, the control as a means to control poverty. In Labour Party entered into an electoral 1929, a number of local authorities decided agreement with Irish Nationalists. to act unilaterally, prompting Catholics in the North West to disrupt Labour meetings, Yet the fact that, even in the 1930s, the with the Catholic hierarchy’s direct Labour Party was still strenuously courting involvement.44 Aspects of foreign policy the Catholic vote belies Dale’s assertion that were also sources of frustration for the the Catholic Socialist Society had got the Catholic Church. In 1930, Foreign Secretary Catholic vote ‘in the bag’. A series of issues Arthur Henderson supported the suspension 49 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

of the Maltese constitution on the grounds In the post-war period a succession of that it was biased against non-Catholics, Catholic Labour members attempted to and in 1931 Pope Pius XI’s encyclical on resolve this longstanding tension between social and labour questions – Quadragesimo Catholicism and Labour through the Anno – reiterated the incompatibility of advocacy of Christian Democracy. The Catholicism and socialism. Indeed, the People and Freedom Group, founded encyclical was a sustained deconstruction of with the encouragement of exiled Italian socialist principles that could leave no doubt Christian Democrat and Catholic priest, Don in the mind of Catholics of the Church’s Luigi Sturzo, sought to portray European absolute repudiation of collectivism. Christian Democrat parties as being on Christian teaching, it argued, suggested the left, and therefore natural allies of that: the Labour Party. Its journal, People and Freedom, even went so far as to argue that man, endowed with a social nature, is Christian Democracy was inseparable from placed on this earth so that by leading .46 Generally speaking, a life in society and under an authority this seems to have been either impolitely ordained of God he may fully cultivate ignored or resisted outright, with those and develop all his faculties unto the associating with European Christian praise and glory of his Creator; and that Democrats being roundly criticized both by faithfully fulfilling the duties of his at home and abroad (for instance, Frank craft or other calling he may obtain for Pakenham – Chancellor of the Duchy himself temporal and at the same time of Lancaster with responsibility for the eternal happiness. Socialism, on the other British zones of Austria and Germany hand, wholly ignoring and indifferent – maintained a close relationship with to this sublime end of both man and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer).47 society, affirms that human association Efforts to get the Labour Party to engage in has been instituted for the sake of the pan-European umbrella group Nouvelles material advantage alone.45 Équipes Internationales came to nothing, to the palpable frustration of the People The Labour government further alienated and Freedom Group. The only Labour Party the Catholic Church by reopening member to attend its congress in 1948 was diplomatic relations with the USSR and George Caitlin – father of Shirley Williams – adopting a policy of non-intervention reputedly annoying the Party hierarchy. in the Spanish Civil War (the extreme anticlericalism of parts of the republican Yet British Socialists (the Christian movement saw the Catholic Church Europe- Socialist parliamentary group as wide supporting the nationalists). vehemently as any) spurn Christian 50 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

democracy as ‘of the Right’ and utterly politicians (Stafford Cripps, for example), alien … Christian Democrats and although sympathetic to the policy personalist socialists, supported by true positions of Christian Democracy, were liberals and by progressive conservatives opposed to the notion of specifically who believe in human rights, are fighting Christian political parties along Christian for the soul of Europe. Gladly would democratic lines. Christian Socialist groups they accept the leadership of Britain. provided no support either – indeed, George But Britain cannot assist their cause by Caitlin argued that the Parliamentary promoting division rather than healing it, Christian Socialists were a group of ‘Socialist by blanketing in hostile incomprehension neophytes concerned to show ultra Socialist the axial force on which the whole battle orthodoxy’.50 depends – Christian Democracy.48 The People and Freedom Group tired of The core ideological fault line lay, according its advocacy of Christian Democracy for to the late Catholic scholar Michael the Labour Party. In 1950 George Caitlin Fogarty, in different views of the role of expressed the view that a Christian the state: the Christian Democrat would Democratic Party might become a not, he argued, ‘look outwards’ from necessity if the government did not pay the state, rather they would look to the respect to ‘freedom as well as planning, social structure as a whole and ‘bring the to personal dignity as well as “welfare”’.51 State, among other groups, into its proper The Group did not survive the decade. As perspective’. In Britain, suggests Keating, one commentator put it, it was a marginal those best positioned to understand this movement, a minority within a minority. It would be either social conservatives or was, nevertheless, an attempt to resolve the social democrats.49 While the Christian obvious tensions between Catholic social Democrat tradition, therefore, would not teaching and mainstream Labour politics. be completely foreign to Labour, it was one It sought to do that, however, by shifting that would have a hard time in the post the Labour Party’s centre of gravity away war period, with the welfare state and the from the Fabian welfarism of the immediate nationalisation of industry approaching its aftermath of the Second World War. In zenith. retrospect, this was obviously too grand a vision for a group that neither commanded At the time, there was no natural route any broad-based support amongst working into the party for Christian Democracy. Catholics, nor drew the sympathy of key Working class Catholics were generally national leaders. more politically radical than the People and Freedom Group and existing Christian 51 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

The latter half of the twentieth century as conservative and reactionary, on many has seen continuity in the theme of shared policy issues (immigration, unemployment, interests mixed with ongoing tension. the economy) it has consistently stood While the importance of the working class well to the left of the now departed New Catholic vote has diminished over time Labour government. Over time, Catholic (though this is not to say that it has now social positions have remained remarkably completely disappeared52) the number of consistent while Labour’s – for reasons Catholic Members of Parliament remains we explore below – have gone through remarkably high. For reasons we shall successive reorientations. explore below, the social libertarian turn of the Party, beginning in the 1960s but The relationship of Catholicism social continuing to the present day, has proved teaching and socialism is fundamentally a to be another source of significant tension. relationship of opposition: There have been three significant conflicts over the course of the last Parliament alone: If Socialism, like all errors, contains the passage of the Human Fertilization and some truth (which, moreover, the Embryology Act, attempts to determine Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), the admissions policy of Catholic schools, it is based nevertheless on a theory of and the closure of Roman Catholic human society peculiar to itself and adoption agencies because of the passage irreconcilable with true Christianity. of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation Religious socialism, Christian socialism, Regulations) 2007. are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a This has even surfaced as an explicit debate true socialist.54 about the role of Catholic politicians, prompted by Labour MEP Mary Honeyball’s Quadragesimo Anno, of course, is using article in The Guardian suggesting that the word ‘socialist’ in Rerum Novarum’s was ‘kowtowing’ to pressure technical sense of ‘a community of goods’. from Catholic ministers in allowing free Therefore, we must be careful not to votes on the HFE Bill. The article concluded read this straight across to Catholicism’s with the (rhetorical?) question, ‘Should relationship with the Labour Party, which devout Catholics such as [Ruth] Kelly, [Des] is, as critics and admirers have observed, Browne and [Paul] Murphy be allowed on far from socialist. Understood more loosely, the government front bench in the light of elements of Catholic social teaching closely their predilection to favour the Pope’s word resemble types of Christian Socialism. Just above the government’s?’53 Yet, in spite of as with the Christian Socialist tradition, attempts to portray the Catholic Church Catholicism and Labour have managed to 52 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

be fellow travellers, not least because of the Benedict XVI’s third encyclical, Caritas in Party’s ideological flexibility. Catholicism’s Veritate – were to dissolve, it would be opposition to liberal capitalism is no less difficult indeed to see this longstanding trenchant than its repudiation of socialism: relationship endure with any vigour through the twenty first century.56 … it is still possible today, as in the days of Rerum Novarum, to speak of Notes inhuman exploitation. In spite of the great changes which have taken place 1 The Times (London), 28 November 1960. in the more advanced societies, the 2 Greenleaf, W.H. The British Political Tradition Volume human inadequacies of capitalism Two, 440. and the resulting domination of things 3 Martin, D.A. Journal of Economic Issues, 16.2, June over people are far from disappearing. 1982, 535–543. In fact, for the poor, to the lack of 4 Nevil Johnson, quoted in Wright, T. R.H. Tawney, material goods has been added a lack of Manchester University Press, 1987, 134. knowledge and training which prevents 5 MacIntyre, A. Against the Self-Images of the Age, them from escaping their state of quoted in Greenleaf, W.H. The British Political Tradition Volume Two, 452. humiliating subjection.55 6 Wright, T. R.H. Tawney, Manchester University Press, 1987, 1–2. Whether this remains the case in the 7 twenty-first century will depend on the Ibid., 8. direction of Labour’s next evolution. British 8 Ibid., 9. Catholicism should surely now be well used 9 Tawney, R.H. ‘The Conditions of Economic Liberty’, to the fact that the broad coalition that quoted in Greenleaf, W.H. The British Political 448–449. is the Labour Party contains many voices Tradition Volume Two, that differ from Catholic social teaching 10 Tawney, R.H. ‘Religion and Economic Life’, TLS, 6 January 1956, quoted in Greenleaf, W.H. The British on a range of social and political issues Political Tradition Volume Two, 442. (both those on which it would be seen to 11 In the ten year period 1893–1902, an annual be conservative and those which it would average of 8.75 million working days were lost be seen to be ‘liberal’ – i.e., stem cell through strike action. In the period 1913–22, the research and gay adoption and asylum and comparable figure was 20.58 million. immigration and the Iraq war). If one of 12 Greenleaf, W.H. British Political Tradition, 452–462. the final bridges between Catholic social 13 Ibid., 450. teaching and Labour thinking – a deep 14 Tawney wrote in his Commonplace Book that any critique of the ideologies underpinning goodness an individual or community could achieve market capitalism and its effects on the is ‘a house built on piles driven into black slime and vulnerable, developed powerfully in Pope 53 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

always slipping down into it unless we are building (1907), The Catholic Workingman (1909), Miners, night and day’. Mines and Misery (1909), Eight Pound Cottages for Glasgow Citizens (1913), Municipal Banking (1920) 15 Quoted in Wright, T. R.H. Tawney, 176. and The New Rent Act (1920). He was a member 16 Tawney, R.H. Equality, quoted in Greenleaf, W.H. The of the ILP from 1907, and one of the famously British Political Tradition Volume Two, 453. radical group of ‘Red Clydesiders’ elected in the 1922 General Election. Although experiencing a 17 According to Greenleaf, the notion may have been tense relationship with MacDonald, he became drawn from John Ruskin, Professor Ernest Barker of Minister of Health in 1924 and was responsible for Oxford University, or the Roman Catholic theorist the passage of the significant Financial Provisions Ramiro de Maetzu. In any case, the idea was probably Housing Act (1924), which saw a massive expansion not his own. in affordable municipal housing. Around 500,000 18 Tawney, R.H. The Acquisitive Society, 29. houses were built using the subsidy provided by the Act. 19 Tawney, R.H. Equality, 455. 32 Quoted in Wood, I.S. John Wheatley, Manchester 20 Tawney, R.H. Commonplace Book, quoted in University Press, 1990, 18. Greenleaf, W.H. The British Political Tradition Volume 33 Two, 446 Ibid., 21.

34 21 Ibid., 444–445. Quoted in Dale, G. God’s Politicians, 72.

35 22 Tawney, R.H. The Radical Tradition, quoted in Wood, I.S. John Wheatley, 22. Greenleaf, W.H. The British Political Tradition Volume 36 Dale, G. God’s Politicians, 74. Two, 457. 37 Keating, J. ‘The British Experience: Christian 23 Tawney, R.H. The British Labour Movement, quoted Democrats Without a Party’, in Hanley, D.L. (ed.), in Greenleaf, W.H. The British Political Tradition Christian Democracy in Europe: A Comparative Volume Two, 462. Perspective, Pinter, 1994, 169. 24 Wright, T. R.H. Tawney, 143. 38 Dale, G. God’s Politicians, 75. 25 Ibid., 154. 39 Keating, J. ‘The British Experience’, 170. 26 Tawney, R.H. ‘A note on Christianity and the Social 40 Catterall, P. ‘The Distinctiveness of British Order’, in The Attack and Other Papers, quoted in Socialism?’ 144. Wright, T. R.H. Tawney, 141. 41 Ibid., 140. 27 Greenleaf, W.H. British Political Tradition, 449. 42 Ibid., 142. 28 Tawney, R.H. Commonplace Book, 449. 43 Riddell, N. Labour in Crisis: The Second Labour 29 Tawney, R.H. The Acquisitive Society, quoted in Government, 1929–31, Manchester University Press, Greenleaf, W.H. The British Political Tradition Volume 1999, 113. Two, 450. 44 Ibid., 108. 30 Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum: On Capital and Labour, 15 May 1891. papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13rerum.htm 45 Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno: On Reconstruction of the Social Order, 15 May 1931, 31 Wheatley (1869–12 May 1930) was an Irish vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/ immigrant who worked as a miner in Braehead. He documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo- later set up his own printing business, specialising in anno_en.html, paragraph 118. In line with Rerum his own political tracts: How the Miners are Robbed Novarum, however, it outlined a special concern

54 Building Jerusalem? Twentieth century engagements

for justice for the poor delivered by the State and opposition of the Catholic community to the Human defended the place of associationism, criticising Fertilization and Embryology Bill. In the 2010 General socialist parties for not taking it up. Election, Labour’s Margaret Curran (same candidate as the 2008 by-election) won the seat with a 11,000 46 People and Freedom, February 1950, quoted in majority. Keating, J. ‘The British Experience’, 175. 53 Honeyball, M. ‘Cardinals’ Sins’, Guardian– 47 Ibid. According to Keating, German SDP leader Kurt Comment is Free, 20 May 2008. guardian.co.uk/ Schumacher called Pakenham a ‘psuedo-socialist’. commentisfree/2008/may/20/cardinalssins 48 People and Freedom, quoted in Keating, J. ‘The 54 Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 15 May 1931, British Experience’, 175. paragraph 120. 49 Quoted in Keating, J. ‘The British Experience’, 176. 55 John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 1 May 1991, 50 Ibid., 177. paragraph 33. 51 Ibid., 177. 56 In 2008, Cardinal Archbishop Cormac Murphy- O’Connor suggested that he was ‘not so sure’ 52 There was some speculation about the role of the that Labour stood for the needs of Catholics. See Catholic vote in Labour’s defeat in the Glasgow East timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article427996.ece by-election in 2008, focusing particularly on the

55 Twenty-first century engagements

Twenty-first century engagements

Contemporary Christian Socialism Christian Socialism has never really ‘gone away’. In the later half of the twentieth century its narrative becomes more firmly tied to an institution yet simultaneously more intellectually fragmented. Since Tawney and Temple, there have been no acknowledged authoritative philosophical or theological voices capable of commanding the attention both of the Church and the Party. Yet in spite of this, the last thirty years have seen an upsurge in the churches’ activism on the left, partly in reaction to the programmes of the successive Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s.

Methodist Donald Soper was clearly a itself more from the principles of Christian towering figure in successive expressions Socialists like Soper in the years since his of Christian Socialism, including the death. Christian Socialist Movement (CSM). The dominant theme of his political life was Yet the organisation for which Soper is nuclear disarmament and the campaign most remembered – the modern Christian against the arms trade. In the way in Socialist Movement (CSM) – has succeeded which he strongly aligned his exposition in achieving more longevity than any of Christian Socialism with , in previous Christian Socialist entity. An his uncompromising egalitarianism and amalgam of the Society of Socialist Clergy his hostility towards ‘theology’ as against and Ministers and the Socialist Christian following Jesus, he evoked something of the League, it launched in 1960. R.H. Tawney biblical radicalism of Hardie (he was also attended its inaugural public meeting. a teetotaller and opponent of gambling). Indeed, it is probably that aura that It affiliated to the Party in 1988,1 and contributed to the sense of him being so its closeness to Labour has been both a highly respected by the Party. From a policy great strength and, according to some, a point of view, however, it is hard to imagine significant weakness. On the one hand, it how the Labour Party could have distanced has helped sustain the Party’s conversation

56 Twenty-first century engagements

with faith groups over the course of the and Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia, Alun Labour administration, not least because a Michael was consistently challenged to give significant number of MPs and government examples of the ‘prophetic voice’ of the ministers (including, of course, Tony Blair CSM.2 Specifically, criticisms were levelled and Gordon Brown) were members. It at failing to oppose the war on Iraq or what has also provided a focal point for the Milbank described as the New Labour neo- organisation and training of members liberal economic project, as if indeed they of the Party sympathetic to the public were ‘the religious wing of New Labour’. witness of Christianity. It is, for instance, Refusing to ‘flag wave’ on a selective range active at Party conferences, engaging the issues, Michael suggested rather that the membership of the Party in conversations role of the movement was to bring together around Christianity and politics. Latterly, Christians with a wide range of political and it has taken an interesting turn from theological views for fellowship and mutual campaigning not just on ‘soft’ issues such support. as international development, but on harder policy issues such as banking and In a way reminiscent of the Victorian tax reform and the regulation of vulture Christian Socialists, two different visions of funds. As with other strands of ethical the outworking of Christian Socialism are socialism, the moral bankruptcies of global in tension. One is moderately hostile to the capitalism have breathed some new life into existing institutions of democracy, seeing the organisation and its thinking – such them as part of the problem that Christian campaigns represent a serious attempt to Socialism speaks against. Milbank, for engage the witness of the Christian socialist example, places a much greater emphasis tradition with the most egregious aspects of on the socialism of intermediary institutions, modern global capitalism. against both the market and the state. The other account of Christian Socialism On the other hand, CSM has, at various sees engagement in political institutions – times over the past thirteen years, been including in political parties – a legitimate, accused of having too close a relationship indeed desirable, vehicle for the pursuit with the Labour Government. According of Christian missiological engagement, to some critics, the proper position of working for renewal and restoration through Christian Socialism is always one of tension secular structures. Indeed, the nature of the and prophetic critique, including critique engagement – the building of relationships, of the Labour Party. During a BBC Radio affecting the culture of the party – is itself 4 debate on Christian Socialism in June part of the mission. The CSM clearly falls 2007, between MP (current within the latter model. Chair of CSM), theologian John Milbank 57 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

Unlike predecessor groups or entities such acting on a presumption that they will as Kenneth Leach’s Jubilee Group, the always be shouting from the sidelines. CSM builds itself around this theological The hookline is ‘Don’t send. Be sent.’4 model and expectation of engagement, not necessarily on substantial agreement Historically, it is difficult to tell whether the around political and theological issues. ‘revival’ of Christian Socialism discussed Specifically, it now aspires to be a above is a by-product of the rise of three community, not just for Christian Labour religiously inclined leaders in succession Party activists, but also one which is (and so destined to wane as the Party increasingly seeking to draw on a wider ‘reverts to type’), or whether it comes as reservoirs of Christian activism, moving part of a broader revival. On the above people from inaction in the face of social account, there is something of a distinction challenges, through charitable response and between the Christian Socialism of the campaigning, to formal party politics as a New Labour leadership (to which we will legitimate and effect witness of the gospel: shortly turn) and the CSM’s aspiration to ‘We want to be a family and support for build a broader, more energetic ‘missional’ the adventure of rolling up your sleeves and engagement amongst Christians who may getting involved’.3 lean toward the left, but are not yet actively engaged in Party politics. At the Christian Socialist Movement in the last few years we have noticed *** a surge of interest from young people and twenty-somethings. They are to a According to the former Director of the large extent the ‘Make Poverty History CSM, Graham Dale, John Smith was generation’ … Also far beyond the responsible for creating the space in confines of the church, in the thriving which the upcoming generation of Labour NGO sector, there is a river of energy leadership could articulate their faith. Smith flowing containing many folks who are argued that he was a Christian Socialist naturally left-sided, but who need some in the tradition of R.H. Tawney, though he confidence-building measures before was par excellence a political practitioner engaging in party politics. Hence CSM’s rather than a political thinker. Christianity ‘Do not send this postcard’ campaign. It (understood in an appropriately broad, un- encourages those for whom campaigning dogmatic, and un-exclusive way) provided and postcard-sending have become him with a useful ethical backdrop for his second nature, to see themselves development of a ‘post Thatcherite agenda’. as future recipients of postcards, in What mattered for him was that politics positions of responsibility, rather than was a ‘moral activity’, and that Christianity 58 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

provided a context in which a policy could as beings within community. For each, be pursued because it was ‘the right thing this has entailed a positive account of to do’. Smith spoke of ‘community’ and so freedom situated within the common good, created ground for political argument to the as opposed to libertarian positions which left of Thatcherite individualism, without emphasized freedom as the mere absence appealing to the discredited and unpopular of coercion. By promoting the value of modes of old-style socialism.5 fellowship, the earlier idealists provided a context within which there flourished a After Smith’s untimely death in 1994, Tony range of progressive political programmes Blair seemed to offer a more sophisticated that came to coalesce around the welfare Christian Socialism, founded on the state. thinking of philosopher John Macmurray, though ultimately its tactical political For Macmurray, there were elements of effect was broadly the same (i.e., it enabled the idealist tradition which were naïve the construction of a meaningful public and blandly progressive; these were discourse critical of Thatcherism and fundamentally challenged by the social the neo-liberal economic agenda while trauma of the First and Second World nevertheless steering clear of anything Wars. Before these conflicts, history had that smacked of left wing ideology). Blair appeared to exhibit a progressive purpose encountered the work of Macmurray that could reinforce faith, but it now through Peter Thomson, an Australian priest seemed to be driven by irrational desires who served as something of a chaplain and violence, thereby challenging faith. to Blair up until his early years as Labour Thus he remodelled classical idealism, leader. In 1994 he said, somewhat evasively, de-emphasising the universal mind and ‘If you really want to understand what I’m universal human fellowship in favour of all about you have to take a look at a guy the priority of action – put bluntly, the called John Macmurray. It’s all there.’ need to practice fellowship. Because the human capacity for absolute freedom According to Bevir and O’Brien, Macmurray can be expressed only through action stands somewhat upstream of the in community, our freedom is, therefore, contemporary communitarian tradition inherently relative, especially in relation to of Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor and material resources, the control of desire, and within the older liberal idealist tradition the extent of fellowship.6 of T.H. Green and George Caird which had been so influential on Tawney, Beveridge In 1996, Blair praised Macmurray and William Temple. All these thinkers specifically for delineating the starting have affirmed that individuals only exist point of a modern concept of community 59 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

through his rigorous location of individuals people to be the same but because in social settings such that they cannot only through equality in our economic properly ignore their obligations to circumstances can our individuality others.7 It is here that we find one of the develop properly. British democracy rests philosophical roots of the rhetoric of ‘rights ultimately on the shared perception by and responsibility’ that became such a all the people that they participate in the touchstone of New Labour, though this benefits of the common weal.9 has since evolved in ways that Macmurray would have found unacceptable. In her Without trying to establish a direct link, it book, Blair’s Community: Communitarian is clear that the early Blair articulated his Thought and New Labour, Sarah Hale political philosophy in a broadly idealist has argued that New Labour rhetoric on idiom, in the tradition of T.H. Green, community is usually strongly contractual Macmurray or, indeed, Maurice. But he (e.g., where continuing anti-social behaviour found himself confronted with the demands could result in lost benefits), and so betrays of forming a policy programme for a an understanding which is appreciably prospective government, and addressing different from Macmurray’s.8 the sheer difficulties of responding to intractable governmental challenges like This is not to say that Blair’s use of low-level anti-social behaviour, public Macmurray was purely presentational. In security and the need to respond to the the closing paragraph of his maiden speech pressure for legislative change from socially in the House of Commons, during which he libertarian elements of the party. The result had been heavily critical of the Conservative was a series of compromises and syntheses Government for failing to do anything with other agendas. While retaining the about high levels of unemployment, he language of community – not least as briefly referred to his own understanding of a kind of continuing protest against the socialism: hyper-individualism of elements of the Conservative/neo-liberal period – the I am a Socialist not through reading a political actuality was far more ambiguous. textbook that has caught my intellectual We explore this in more depth below. fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, So we arrive at departing and defeated Socialism corresponds most closely to Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, an existence that is both rational and famously a ‘Son of the Manse’. Unlike Tony moral. It stands for co-operation, not Blair, whose interest in religious matters confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It developed during his time at university, stands for equality, not because it wants Gordon Brown had been exposed to 60 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

Christian faith and practice from the cradle. is one on which Brown would frequently This umbilical link to his parents’ faith and trade in religious and Scriptural references. work has sustained in him what he himself Journalistic accounts of his Presbyterian has called ‘social Christianity’.10 This, he moral compass demonstrate a widely held has always claimed, left him sensitive to belief that Brown, otherwise technocratic in the life of ordinary working people in de- style, somehow ‘comes alive’ when dealing industrialising Britain: with these issues – that this is the ‘real’ him:

Living in a manse, he related, ‘You find … put him in a church and the effect out very quickly about life and death can be electrifying. One of his best and the meaning of poverty, justice and performances, eloquent and uplifting, unemployment.’ … [and are] bequeathed was in St Paul’s Cathedral in 2005 on an osmotic understanding of the Bible.11 the eve of the Gleneagles summit, talking about the rich world’s obligations to the This is Brown’s early life as he would poor. Here the Biblical cadences of his narrate it, emphasising a moral connection vocabulary were allowed full range.14 to communities in need, the importance of gainful employment and a rejection Those who emphasise Brown’s religious of revolutionary socialism in favour of a narrative also highlight his engagement Presbyterian-flavoured egalitarianism. with religious thinkers. Jim Wallis, a left Commenting on Brown’s prospects during of centre American evangelical, has been his apprenticeship in provincial Scottish labelled ‘Brown’s religious guru’ (Brown has Labour politics, the not-so-sympathetic read and commended his works). In turn, biographer Tom Bower suggests that the Wallis has suggested that ‘it’s in his DNA, party recognised Brown’s ability but ‘wanted Christian thinking … It really is very powerful evidence of more than a commitment to the in him. Where he is, where any of us are on community and worship of the Bible, Burns our own journey of faith, is something that and Kier Hardie’.12 Over the trajectory of he can answer for himself but he knows his public life, some of Brown’s key political the scriptures, he knows what God requires concerns have often cohered with those of … The deep commitment and motivation his alleged religious tradition, though we within him is moral and personal, not just should not necessarily deduce causation political.’15 from correlation. Foremost among these have been cancellation of third world debt, What we know of Brown’s earlier years, which has been linked presentationally, however, doesn’t always cohere with this and sometimes substantially, to the social narrative. Very early in his political career codes of the Old Testament.13 This issue Brown’s intellectual horizons were much 61 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

broader: for example, an essay in the Brown’s theology, we can nevertheless see Red Paper on Scotland (a collection that that Brown invokes his spiritual legacy he edited at the age of 24) revealed an but tends to de-particularise it, detaching admiration for Antonio Gramsci, while his compassion from any confessional context, Ph.D. thesis focused on , beliefs about the nature of God or the leader of the Independent Labour Party (a mission of the Church. Thus, Doug Gay fellow Red Clydesider with John Wheatley, finds Brown to be one among a generation he espoused a Christianity somewhat similar of Scottish Protestants now in public life in nature to Hardie’s). Thus, a biographical who display a residual loyalty to the Kirk enterprise which places faith at the heart as a source of identity, but who show very of Brown’s psyche deserves more detailed little sign of having ever been emotionally, scrutiny than it is often given.16 Rarely, if spiritually or intellectually captured by the ever, does Brown make direct reference to Christian gospel: in his words, Brown is the personal faith (as opposed to the formative ‘quintessential, modernist, demythologized, influence of his parents’ faith) and when liberal, kultur-Presbyterian’.21 Brown’s authorised biographer insists that he is Christian, he offers no further evidence If pushed to identify his philosophical or explanation.17 Bower suggests that the heritage, Brown would see himself standing rugby injuries which resulted in his loss of in the tradition of the ‘sympathy theorists’, sight also disturbed an earlier confidence: of the Scottish Enlightenment – men like ‘Neither in public nor in private would Smith and Hume. The ethical backdrop he ever express thanks to God or refer for political action is a common feeling to Christianity as an influence, guide or that springs directly from the human support for his life’.18 condition. Rhetorically, this is borne out in the discourse of ‘our shared moral sense Brown’s public comments on his father’s that moves human beings even in the faith indicate a degree of distance from the most comfortable places to sympathy and subject: in his 2006 solidarity with fellow human beings even in speech, Brown observed, ‘My father was a far-away places in distress’.22 minister of the church. His motive was not theological zeal but compassion … Most of Brown was one of the most rhetorically all my parents taught me that each of us religious politicians in our history but, given should live by a moral compass’.19 Elsewhere, his caution on the subject, his Christian he has contrasted his father’s ‘social Socialism is hard to define precisely. He Christianity’, expressed as the desire to treat certainly followed in the footsteps of Smith everyone equally, with ‘fundamentalism’.20 and Blair, synthesising what he could Without exploring the contours of John from his Christian background with his 62 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

political project. But, without seeking a will allow internationally acclaimed window into Brown’s soul, it seems likely surgeons and consultants from around that once the analysis moves beyond the world to work in this country. I can superficial journalistic attempts to unpick assure the House and the country that his intellectual commitments, the influence that extra investment in our NHS will of Christianity on Brown’s political life was continue under this Government. Of indirect – a significant and profound part course, it would be taken out by the of his background, but one which he never Conservative Party.23 personally felt full confidence in. Somewhat in defence of Blair, Roy Revisionism and the turn to a Hattersley argued in The Guardian that liberal Labour tradition few party leaders would have been able to In February 2002 Labour Tony answer the question with anything other McWalter asked an awkward question: than generalities. ‘G.D.H. Cole’, he noted, ‘although himself an egalitarian, conceded Mr. McWalter: My right hon. Friend is the electoral advantage of a party being sometimes subject to rather unflattering “almost without doctrine – so undefined in or even malevolent descriptions of his its doctrinal basis as to make recruits readily motivation. Will he provide the House available among people of quite different with a brief characterisation of the types”’ in the pursuit of the interests of ‘the political philosophy that he espouses and bottom dog’. On a more critical note, he which underlies his policies? argued that Blair had occupied an especially difficult position by describing Labour as Mr Blair, after a moment’s silence, gave ‘new’, and so renouncing not just the historic what seemed to be an evasive, confused means (e.g., ownership of the means of and confusing answer: production) of the British labour movement but also its end (e.g., equality). New Labour The Prime Minister: First, I should thank presented itself as an entirely classless party, my hon. Friend for his question, which ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy has evinced such sympathy in all parts rich’ as long as they paid their taxes. It was of the House, about the criticism of me. created, and survived, on the questionable The best example that I can give is the basis that the interests of conflicting groups rebuilding of the national health service can be reconciled by increased efficiency today under this Government – extra and good will. Into the political vacuity, investment. For example, there is the implied Hattersley, seeped a nonsensical appointment today of Sir Magdi Yacoub mix of communitarianism, the Third Way, the to head up the fellowship scheme that stakeholder society, and so on.24 63 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

Hattersley perhaps overstated the extent new and more subtle social problems, to which Blair dug his own philosophical hitherto concealed by a natural obsession grave, since he was in effect responding with material standards, now come to to a political-ideological problem that has the surface and demand attention’.25 now bedevilled the Labour Party for several Crosland still advanced an argument for generations. greater social equality, but the foundation of the argument had changed, or had The Labour Party emerged organically, and at least moved in a new direction from quite un-ideologically, as a broad cultural early theorists like Tawney. Inequality movement centring on a moral protest was not objectively morally aberrant, but against poverty and extreme inequality – as questionable on the grounds of restriction Hattersley suggests, ‘a broad movement on of freedom of choice: ‘… areas of avoidable behalf of the bottom dog’. This attracted social distress and physical squalor … are individuals of a variety of persuasions. still on a scale which narrowly restricts But with the welfare state in place, the freedom of choice and movement for a large worst deficiencies of labour law corrected, number of individuals’.26 the nationalisation of significant parts of the economy and the eradication of the Equality itself would include greater access worst excesses of poverty, Tony Crosland, to ‘prestige symbols of high consumption’. who very much defined the answers to For Tawney, part of the problem was the this conundrum that New Labour came to waste produced in the production and propound, was already asking how socialism excessive consumption of luxury goods. could be embodied in a realistic political For Crosland, the increasing acceptance of programme in 1956. the social norm of access to luxury goods was a sign of the ‘threshold of an era of If growth proceeded at the expected rate, new abundance’. This is not just a case of material want, poverty and deprivation of Crosland against Christian asceticism, but a essential goods would gradually cease to be fundamentally different articulation of the a problem. He asked for the determination good, a socialism turned ironically towards to ‘improve an already improved society’. liberty and consumption. Engels had called The key issues would not be the economic Britain ‘the most bourgeois of all nations causes of distress, but the social and … a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois psychological causes: ‘we shall rely less on proletariat besides the bourgeoisie itself’. broad, sweeping measures of expenditure Now for Crosland, this became the impulse than on concentrated measures of aid for a thorough revision of the Labour Party’s to limited groups … individual therapy, fundamental objectives: casework and preventative treatment … 64 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

… the Labour Party … would be ill We need not only higher exports and old advised to continue making a largely age pensions, but more open air cafés, proletarian class appeal when a majority brighter and gayer streets at night, later of the population is gradually attaining closing hours for public houses, more a middle class standard of life, and local repertory theatres, better and more distinct symptoms even of a middle-class hospitable hoteliers and restaurateurs, psychology.27 brighter and cleaner eating houses, more riverside cafés, more pleasure gardens on This is the philosophy behind the Labour the Battersea model, more murals and Party’s search for ‘Mondeo man’. Thus, pictures in public places, better design though he was many years ahead of most of for furniture and pottery and women’s the rest of the Labour Party, Crosland’s logic clothes, statues in the centre of new and its conclusions are now obvious enough. housing estates, better designed street As the political, social and economic lamps and telephone kiosks, and so on challenges reshaped the landscape, so the ad infinitum.28 Labour Party would have to do the same. This was, in a word, simple revisionism. In On a more serious turn, Crosland attacked another way, however, it is clear that the ‘socially-imposed restrictions on the usually neat distinction between means individual’s private life and liberty’: and ends made by most revisionists is not ‘prehistoric’ abortion laws, licensing, simple: Crosland wanted a modification obsolete penalties for sexual abnormality, of ends as well, away from the solidaristic, the illiterate censorship of books and plays. collectivist, group-centred themes of the He called the divorce laws hypocritical, and past towards an individualist and aesthetic wrote that, ‘a time will come, as material approach. standards rise, when divorce law reform will increase the sum of human welfare more For Crosland, defining himself against both than a rise in the food subsidies.’29 In short, the Fabians and nonconformists, the Labour the main plank of Crosland’s revisionism was Party would direct its attention more and a turn from purely economic equality (this more to ‘the freedom of personal and leisure having been realised through a mix of the life’, evincing ahead of time many of the ameliorating welfare activity of the state policy themes that have interested recent and a growth in the economy) to social Labour governments. So there was not just equality, to be realised through the repeal a reconsideration of the means, but an and enactment of pieces of legislation. alteration of the ends also: The ‘Third Way’, represented most clearly in the work of sociologist , 65 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

is a recognition of and a justification Marquand suggest that, fundamentally, the for exactly the dynamic which Crosland liberal case for the market has been proved. identified, albeit mediated through the For Hutton in particular, no distinctively new and wider challenge of globalisation. socialist critique of capitalism is possible, Writing on the changes in European centre and thus Labour’s intellectual and social left politics in the 1980s, and specifically base is eroded. on the German SDP’s ‘Basic Programme’, Giddens noted the move from an ethos Through the contexts of these two of collectivism and solidarity to one of revisionist moments – Croslandite individual achievement and economic revisionism and the Third Way – we see competitiveness, an emphasis on private that the Labour Party is in the midst of consumption rather than state activity: a generational process of explaining its ongoing raison d’être. Indeed, revisionism That these policy shifts were necessary is a now held to be a permanent process is indicated by changes in patterns of rather than a settled position. According to political support, to which all social Lord Mandelson, New Labour died on 6th democratic parties have had to react. May 2010, but ‘the cast of mind that new The class relations that used to underlie Labour represents – aspirational, reforming, voting and political affiliation have in touch and that faces up to the choices shifted dramatically, owing to the power demands – must not die with it if our steep decline in the blue-collar working party is to be a serious party of government class … Self expression and the desire again’.31 for meaningful work are replacing the maximising of economic rewards.30 One response has been the attempt to reinvent Labour as a partly liberal, partly In any case, it would be fair to say that social democratic entity. In a speech at the Labour Party has never been able to Demos in February 2010, David Miliband pursue a deeply socialist programme in (then Foreign Secretary) celebrated exactly government. From fairly early on after this turn. ‘The core value we espouse’, he the Second World War it was obliged to argued ‘is a commitment to use government abandon aspirations for a socially controlled to help give people the power to shape their economy, in which resources would be own lives’. While this is not an astonishing allocated by administrative processes departure, it is hardly a restatement of rather than through the price mechanism, Clause IV, or of democratic socialism, but and settle for a mixture of Keynesian rather is a conscious attempt to draw on a economic management and a Beveridgean liberal discourse. welfare state. Both Will Hutton and David 66 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

In the 1990s, spurred by David argued Miliband, and balance them with Marquand’s book The Progressive strong communities and strong government. Dilemma, Labour embraced a more pluralist centre-left politics, in a From a Christian perspective, there is conscious effort to draw on its liberal as some wisdom in this: part of the witness well as social democratic heritage. That of key voices in Christian Socialism is that coalition has now dominated politics for an expanded sphere of activity for the a decade, bringing together individual state would not and does not speak to the rights in a market economy with underlying problems of society, which are collective provision to promote social ethical and relational. If one result of such justice. ideological flexibility is the ability to adopt a more pluralist approach to delivering the I am proud of the long lists of changes in common good, allowing ‘civil society’ to each category. I think we have changed flourish and work to meet social challenges, the country for the better. The liberal then so much the better. achievements – gay rights, human rights, employee rights, disability rights – on The problem is that this is probably not the the one hand. The social democratic best description of the ideological workings ones – childcare, university places, health of New Labour. In key policy areas, we see provision – on the other. And then those an extension of the competitive principles of areas that fused the best of both: a New the market – take, for example, the way in Deal for the Unemployed that uses the which ‘voluntary sector’ agencies have been private and voluntary sector, devolved encouraged to compete with the private budgets for disabled people, the digital and state sectors for contracts to deliver switchover, Academies, all combine welfare services. According to some critics, government leadership with bottom up this is not a rebalancing of the state and innovation and engagement. 32 the market with civil society, but a synthesis of state and market against society. This The two facets of the liberal turn are fully-fledged embrace of the market has, a diminution in the role of the state unsurprisingly, led to an intensified sense as a manager of the economy, and its of anomie amongst Party members33 – development as a source of social rights, particularly Christian members – and whether in the equality and human rights some uncertainty and distrust amongst agenda, in healthcare (later in the speech the electorate. Revisionism is an entirely Miliband celebrates the cancer guarantee) appropriate response for a political party or education. The role of government is not born in industrial Britain, struggling to come to control markets but to mobilise them, to terms with what it exists to do in a post 67 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

industrial era. But not all possible revisions its recruits from among those who are are worthwhile or coherent within a outraged by the corruption and injustices tradition. In the way that it has been carried of our industrial system, and if we forward, revisionism has cut Labour adrift are to see the movement in its proper not only from an electorally embarrassing perspective this fact must never be commitment to nationalisation, but also forgotten. 34 from its core narratives of solidarity, community, and faith and any critique at In spite of the apparent flowering of all of the operation of the market. This Christian Socialism in the last fifteen years, ideological and policy development has the contemporary landscape is one of some been matched by a linguistic turn. Perhaps tension. Croslandite revisionism, the Third in view of what Hutton describes as a lack Way and the development of the liberal of a coherent story and an ideological labour tradition have all resulted in a sense position to cohere around, the Labour Party of alienation amongst Christians. Why? is now much wedded to its self-description The liberal turn, it is arguable, represents as a ‘progressive’ entity. a turn away from the Fabian collectivism that may, in Tawney’s memorable phrase, *** tidy the room but provide no windows for the soul. But several babies have gone This essay has been primarily concerned to out with the bathwater – liberal social outline historical relationships between the legislation on gambling, licensing laws, labour movement and Christianity. We have civil partnerships and bioethical issues may argued that the labour movement emerged have frustrated Christians, but they are from a social milieu in which Christians equally frustrated by New Labour’s easiness were actively engaging in social questions, with the market, militarism and tolerance that Christians within the party were of massive economic inequality, albeit motivated by their faith, and that Christian with a bolstered welfare system. Aside thinkers have led the labour movement in from one or two honourable exceptions engaging in its critique of the ‘acquisitive – international development, faith-based society’. Intellectually, the Labour movement provision of domestic social welfare (under depends on a conception of human dignity tightly controlled conditions) – Christian which is fundamentally Christian. As A. J. Socialism has been worn lightly. It may have Penty put it: marshalled thinking against extreme New Right individualism and helped explain the To understand the Socialist movement, broad ‘communitarian’ ethos of the Party it must be realised that it is primarily in the run up to the 1997 general election, a moral revolt. The movement draws but its traction on the Party in government 68 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

– again with honourable exceptions – has to prevent it, or indeed to encourage the seemed limited. institutions which would seek to prevent it. Nor is it to suggest that, after all, the The revisionist programme which assumed concrete political problems are tractable or that ongoing economic growth would that there are any ethically neat answers. continue to deliver more or less greater But it is to suggest that revisionism jumped wellbeing surely faces a number of obvious the gun in assuming that economic growth practical challenges. As the banking crisis and a sufficiently targeted welfare state and credit fuelled consumer boom amply could deliver to the vulnerable that which demonstrate, not all kinds of economic they need. The Labour movement’s deepest growth are good kinds of growth. Not all challenges to the free market have always promote a fair distribution of resources, been ethical and, indeed, theological. Marx create an ecologically or financially was perhaps wrong in suggesting that sustainable economy, or promote economic liberal capitalism would collapse, others development in all parts of the country, wrong in suggesting that the state would to name just a few complaints that can be a more efficient manager of economic be levelled against the system. Beyond resources, but the ethical critique of the this, Christian Socialism would lodge a acquisitive society remains. This places deeper moral critique: now that the Labour profound questions against the Party’s Party is of no fixed ideological abode, sequestration of the market as a driver of no substantive vision of the ‘the good’ is human flourishing. offered, either for our economic system or for society at large. Tawney would surely If the Labour Party continues to aspire to characterise our society as ‘acquisitive’ – be the Party of ‘a just society, which judges human affairs conducted ‘in the light of its strength by the condition of the weak no other end than the temporary appetites as much as the strong, provides security of individuals’ and ‘the unreasoning and against fear, and justice at work, which morbid pursuit of pecuniary gain.’ We have nurtures families, promotes equality of assured men ‘that there are no ends other opportunity and delivers people from the than their ends, no law other than their tyranny of poverty, prejudice and the abuse desires, no limit other than that which they of power’36, then, inasmuch as it makes think desirable’.35 a critique which is consonant with the Christian Socialist tradition, it will command This is not to say that Labour is responsible high levels of support and involvement wholesale for a culture of consumerism. But, from amongst the Christian community. in adopting social liberalism as its guiding If the idea that the Labour Party owes philosophical principle, it has done nothing more to Methodism than it does to Marx 69 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

contains any truth, it is the truth that together into a new synthesis (it is indeed faith communities can provide personnel. ‘strong meat’ – not without its tensions with Religious belief has a unique affective other models of Christian Socialism – but power, and being part of a faith institution is worthy of significant attention even from can train someone in the virtues of ordinary Party members38). None of the citizenship, service and common endeavour historical Christian traditions within the – virtues without which no political party labour movement would be content with the can long survive.37 Labour Party as it is, but this should act as a spur to greater engagement and faithful So what future for Christian Socialism? Is participation. it destined to recede as the leadership of the Party is taken up by those who are Second, historically it has always been the simply less familiar with, or perhaps more case that Christian communities provide suspicious of, the role of the Christian energy, motivation, inspiration, commitment tradition within the Party? In conclusion, and training – in other words, the kind we want to make three separate but related of social capital that the Labour Party points – two of which hint at a bright needs. This was true of Methodism, of the future, and a third which poses challenges. Catholic Social Guild, and of the Jubilee Debt Campaign. Recent changes in the First, the theological resources are strong. CSM hint in the same direction. After a If the precise nature of Christian Socialism generation of Christians in leadership of the is hard to define, it may well be that this Party, together with all the intellectual and is because the tradition is characterised political compromises, CSM is eschewing a by legitimate and welcome diversity. It Christian Socialism from above and pursuing ranges from Hardie’s biblical radicalism a Christian Socialism from below in a spirit (and his refusal to allow those that of missional engagement. claimed Christianity to simply theorise themselves out of the obvious biblical Third, the prospects for Christian Socialism injunction to care for the most vulnerable), are not the same as the prospects for the through theologically nuanced treatments Christian Socialist Movement. The two face of the social implications the Gospels’ distinct challenges. The latter’s emphasis announcement of the Kingdom of God, on involvement in the Party is, critics would to the deep resources of Roman Catholic argue, the very thing which blunts the social teaching and the impressive and movement’s ‘prophetic edge’. Such critics morally serious work of Tawney. Theologian favour a Christian Socialism free of Party John Milbank is continuing to develop the ties. The brief and unimpressive history of tradition, drawing a variety of these strands the Labour Church stands as a warning of 70 Building Jerusalem? Twenty-first century engagements

4 the dangers of co-option and ‘civil religion’ Flannagan, A. ‘Mission not Meetings’. thecsm.org.uk/ Articles/206038/Christian_Socialist_Movement/ – to use Stanley Hauerwas’ definition, Articles/Exclusive_web_content/Labour_ of ‘supplying epistemological and moral Neighbours_Mission.aspx justifications for … arrangements that made 5 Smith, J. ‘Reclaiming the Ground’, in Bryant, C. (ed.), and continue to make the church politically Reclaiming the Ground, Hodder and Stoughton, 1994, irrelevant’.39 Yet wise, if subversive, 127–141. participation in existing democratic 6 Bevir, M. and O’Brien, D. ‘From Idealism to processes and institutions must surely be Communitarianism: The Inheritance and Legacy of John Macmurray’, History of Political Thought, 24, the norm for Christian socialists, or else 2003, 305–329. Retrieved from: escholarship.org/ they will be caught in theological inaction. uc/item/95m6q13r The challenge for those who advance a 7 Blair, T. ‘Foreword’, in Conford, P. (ed.), The Personal ‘prophetic voice’ model is to give an account World: John Macmurray on Self and Society, Edinburgh, of how they aspire to actually achieve 1996. political change, just as the challenge 8 Hale, S. Blair’s Community: Communitarian Thought to those who pursue Christian Socialism and New Labour, Manchester University Press, 2006, 156. from within the Labour Party is to pursue 9 a model of relationality and engagement hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1983/ jul/06/finance-bill#S6CV0045P0_19830706_ while retaining intellectual integrity and a HOC_248 distinctively Christian and theological voice. 10 Bower, T. Gordon Brown, Prime Minister, Harper Perennial, 2007, 60. The problems come when a line of thought, 11 Ibid., 2. or the work of an organisation, become 12 autonomous from what O’Donovan calls Ibid., 25. ‘evangelical authority’. Christianity will 13 Hutton, W. ‘The Jubilee Line That Works’, The be protected against political conformity Guardian, 2 October 1999. to the extent to which the Church is truly 14 Cockett, R. ‘Leap of Faith,’ Prospect, issue 136, July 2007, prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details. possessed of the Gospel, with its many php?id=9665 (accessed on 22 March 2009). spiritual, social and political implications.40 15 Hinsliff, G. ‘Meet Jim Wallis, the Chancellor’s religious guru,’ , 5 February, 2006. My Notes emphasis. 16 Gay, D. ‘Gordon Brown’s Presbyterian Moral 1 There are fifteen affiliated socialist societies. Compass’, in Scott, P.M., Barker, C.R. and Graham 2 See theologyphilosophycentre.co.uk/2007/07/06/ E.L. (eds.) Remoralizing Britain? Political, Ethical and roundtable-on-christian-socialism/. Theological Perspectives on New Labour, Continuum, 2009, 67. 3 See thecsm.org.uk/Groups/87272/Christian_ Socialist_Movement/About_CSM/Who_we_are/ 17 Robert Peston, quoted in Lloyd, J. ‘An Intellectual Who_we_are.aspx in Power,’ Prospect, issue 136, July 2007, prospect-

71 Building Jerusalem?

magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9687 31 Mandelson, P. ‘New Labour is dead. Long live new (accessed on 22 March 2009). Labour,’ The Times, 3 June 2010 timesonline.co.uk/ tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/ 18 Bower, T. Gordon Brown, Prime Minister, 11. article7142863.ece 19 Gordon Brown, ‘Labour Party Conference 32 www2.labour.org.uk/tory-traditions-david-miliband- Speech,’ 25 September, 2006. See guardian.co.uk/ speech,2010-02-23 politics/2006/sep/25/labourconference.labour2 (accessed 22 March 2009). 33 See, for instance, the essays in Harrington P. and Burks, B.K. (eds.) What next for Labour? Ideas for the 20 Bower, T. Gordon Brown, Prime Minister, 3. progressive left (Demos, 2009) 21 Gay, D. ‘Faith in, with and under Gordon Brown: 34 Penty, A.J. Towards a Christian Sociology, G. Allen & A Scottish Presbyterian/Calvinist Reflection,’ Unwin, 1923, 14. International Journal of Public Theology 1:3–4, 2007, 318–319. 35 Quoted in Wright, T. R.H. Tawney, 176. 22 Brown, G. Moving Britain Forward: Selected 36 The Labour Party Constitution, Clause IV 2(b). Speeches, 1997–2006, Bloomsbury, 2006, 49. 37 For a more contemporary example, consider the 23 Hansard, 27 February 2002: col. 698. significant role of faith institutions in community organising. See Bretherton, L. ‘Labour’s Organising 24 Hattersley, R. ‘So what is it that Tony believes in?’ Roots’, The Guardian (online), 16 July 2010. Available The Guardian, 4 March 2002 (Online). guardian.co.uk/ at: guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/ politics/2002/mar/04/labour.politicalcolumnists jul/16/community-organising-religion (accessed 2 25 Ibid., 111. August 2010). 26 Crosland, A. The Future of Socialism, 90. 38 For a summary, see Milbank, J. ‘The Real Third Way’, in Ritchie, A. (ed.), Crunch Time: A Call to Action, 27 Ibid., 246. Contextual Theology Centre, 2010, 53–88. Available 28 Ibid., 403 at theology-centre.org/resources/books.

39 29 Ibid., 403. Hauerwas, A. After Christendom, Abingdon Press, 1991, 27. 30 Giddens, A. The Third Way: the Renewal of Social 40 Democracy, Polity Press, 1998, 20–21. Ibid., 226.

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